SiC emerging company releases three major weapons

Rongsi Semiconductor was established in December 2019. It is the first and currently the only company in Sichuan that focuses on the design and development of SiC power devices. It has an international team composed of SiC core technical talents from mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and Europe. It has established a complete supply chain from raw materials, epitaxy, wafer manufacturing and packaging testing that complies with the IATF16949 quality management standard .

At the conference, Dai Maozhou, general manager of Rongsi Semiconductor, first delivered a speech on behalf of the company. He said that Rongsi's company motto is "serious" , which is what makes Rongsi different. "Whether it is meeting customer needs or setting the electrical parameters of the device, we take it very seriously. Products are like our children. We put a lot of effort into the entire product development process. And our product development philosophy is also different. We define the various characteristics of the product based on the customer's application scenarios and application needs . We do not make general products."

Rongsi is committed to developing world-class automotive-grade SiC devices, while providing supporting application solutions, striving to achieve the goal of import substitution. Dai Maozhou said, " Reliability is the key to power devices and the quality that remains unchanged over time. In order to achieve high reliability of our products, we are establishing a 'zero defect' automotive-grade quality system. Because of this, our first version of SiC device tape-out can achieve a yield of more than 90% , which is a very high honor in the semiconductor industry."

At this conference, Rongsi officially released the 1200V NovuSiC® EJBS™ and announced the development progress and release time of the new generation of SiC MOSFET . Dai Maozhou said that Rongsi's new products are in the first echelon at home and abroad in terms of performance and cost performance. This is the result of Rongsi Semiconductor's many years of research and development, further enriching the company's product line, highlighting the company's competitiveness in the domestic SiC field, and is one of the milestones of the company's SiC research and development.

At the same time, he believes that driven by the global "dual carbon" policy, SiC power devices will be widely used in high-power, high-frequency, and high-efficiency fields such as new energy vehicles, charging piles, industrial power supplies, photovoltaic inverters, wind power generation, UPS, and communication power supplies in the future. As one of the companies providing green energy-saving technologies, Rongsi will fully support the country's efforts to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction and "dual carbon" goals and contribute its due efforts. With the continuous expansion of downstream demand, Rongsi's SiC devices will meet the needs of many target applications with internationally advanced performance and high reliability, and the company's future development prospects will become more and more broad.

Rongsi's SiC devices are mainly manufactured by Epistar in Taiwan, China . It is understood that Rongsi is one of the few companies among Epistar's many SiC customers that can achieve mass production of SiC MOSFET.

At the meeting, Cheng Taiqing, Sales Director of Greater China of Epistar Technology Co., Ltd., congratulated Rongsi on its product launch via video. Cheng Taiqing believes that driven by markets such as new energy vehicles, data centers and photovoltaics, the demand for SiC power devices will increase significantly. In order to enable Rongsi and other customers to calmly respond to the growing product demand of downstream users, Epistar is currently increasing its capacity expansion efforts. The 6-inch SiC foundry capacity will reach 2,000 pieces/month in 2022, and is expected to reach 4,000 pieces/month in 2023 , and expand to 5,500 pieces/month in 2024 .

Currently, Rongsi has two SiC product series, namely the cost-effective "NovuSiC®" and the high-reliability "DuraSiC®" series, covering NovuSiC® EJBS™ and NovuSiC® MOSFET.

At the meeting, Gao Wei, deputy general manager of Rongsi Semiconductor, delivered a special report on new products, introducing the latest independently developed NovuSiC® EJBS™ and MCR® products.

The first new product to be unveiled was NovuSiC® EJBS™ . Gao Wei mainly introduced the development history of NovuSiC® products, the performance and characteristics of NovuSiC® products, the comparison between NovuSiC® and domestic and foreign competitors, and the reliability and quality of NovuSiC® EJBS™ products.

According to reports, SiC JBS is a composite structure that combines PIN and SBD . Rongsi Semiconductor has developed NovuSiC® EJBS™ (Enhanced Junction Barrier Schottky Diode) products through optimized process design. While not increasing the complexity of the process, it has achieved high surge current resistance equivalent to MPS.

It is understood that in November 2020, Rongsi completed the first engineering wafer production of 1200V/20A NovuSiC® EJBS™ , with a yield rate of over 90%. However, in order to be "serious", Rongsi continued to strive for excellence in technology, and carried out the second engineering wafer production in May 2021, and the process and design continued to be optimized. However, Rongsi was still not satisfied, and it was not until January 2022 that NovuSiC® EJBS™ officially achieved mass production .

The 1200V, 20A NovuSiC® EJBS™ in mass production this time has more than 11 times the surge current resistance and better robustness . At 20A, VF is only 1.37V and the leakage is very low (2μA). In addition, its reverse breakdown and high-temperature leakage show excellent performance, and it can withstand 288W of power and a maximum current of 26A.

At the press conference, Rongsi particularly emphasized their product reliability safeguards.

To ensure that the quality and reliability of SiC wafers meet the highest industry standards, Rongsi strictly implements the AEC-Q101 standard for all its products, and on this basis, creatively proposed the company's internal AEC-Q101+ standard, called NovuSuperior . In addition, in response to potential failures caused by SiC material defects, especially when the wafer CP test cannot screen them out, Rongsi took the lead in jointly developing the WLTBI (Wafer-Level Test & Burn-in) test system with domestic equipment manufacturers to achieve high quality at the wafer end.

Dai Maozhou said, "Let the product performance data speak for itself, let the product's stable quality and stable supply speak for itself, and let Rongsi become a domestic SiC device company worthy of customer trust. This is our behavioral benchmark and mission."

Specifically, Rongsi has done four aspects of work in terms of reliability:

At this conference, RongSi also "exposed" their latest second-generation NovuSiC® MOSFET in advance.

According to the official website of RongSi, in May 2021, RongSi's first-generation 1200 V/75 mΩ planar gate NovuSiC® MOSFET achieved its first engineering tape-out with a yield of 91.2% , and achieved mass production in October 2021. The typical value of the threshold voltage of this NovuSiC® MOSFET is 2.5V, the typical value of the on-resistance is 62mΩ, and the Ron,sp is 3.85mΩcm².

The product features include: low switching loss, high short-circuit withstand time> 3µs, high avalanche tolerance, and a maximum operating junction temperature of 175°C. It can be used in higher frequency environments, thereby significantly reducing the size of peripheral circuit inductors, capacitors, filters, and transformers, improving the overall power density of the system, and reducing the total system cost.

In terms of reliability, Rongsi's first-generation NovuSiC® MOSFET products are undergoing AEC-Q101-related reliability verification.

According to Gao Wei, Rongsi's second-generation NovuSiC® MOSFET is based on more advanced process technology and better design. Compared with the first-generation products, its on-resistance has been greatly reduced, which not only achieves higher cost performance, but also improves the dynamic characteristics of the device and achieves lower switching losses.

Compared with the first generation product, the Ron,sp of RongSi's second generation NovuSiC® MOSFET is reduced by 24% and Qg is reduced by 25% .

RongSi said that their second-generation NovuSiC® MOSFET has been taped out and will be released soon. In addition, they will continue to increase R&D investment and continue to develop 1700V and 3300V automotive-grade SiC diodes, SiC MOSFETs and SiC modules to meet the market demand for high-performance and high-reliability power semiconductor devices in new energy vehicles and high-end industrial fields.

In addition to SiC devices, Rongsi also released the ideal silicon-based diode MCR® (MOS-Controlled Rectifier) ​​with high junction temperature, ultra-low leakage, low on-state voltage drop and stable performance at high junction temperature.

At the meeting, Gao Wei also introduced the development history of MCR® technology. From 2013 to 2014, the Power Integration Technology Laboratory of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China built four process platforms of 100V, 150V, 200V and 300V for MCR® products at China Resources Microelectronics Chongqing (formerly AVIC Microelectronics), realizing the transformation of technological achievements. In 2020, Rongsi Semiconductor purchased the full range of MCR® products, intellectual property rights and process platforms, and the agreement officially came into effect on January 25, 2021.

Compared with ordinary silicon-based diodes, Rongsi's MCR® products have advantages such as nA-level reverse leakage, stable high-temperature characteristics, and high surge current resistance , and are suitable for medium and low voltage 150V~600V applications.

Compared with domestic and foreign competitors, Rongsi's MCR® products have shown advantages in voltage resistance, high-temperature leakage and reverse recovery time. They have higher reliability and lower power loss, truly realizing domestic substitution.

Although Rongsi and similar foreign products have shown nA-level leakage performance at room temperature, Rongsi products show more stable voltage resistance characteristics at high temperature Ta>100℃ .

Since the performance and reliability of NovuSiC® EJBS™ and silicon-based MCR® products are so excellent, what benefits can they bring to customers? At the meeting, Wang Deqiang, senior application engineer of Rongsi, gave an in-depth introduction to product solutions such as photovoltaics, DC fast charging, magnetic LED lighting and energy storage .

Wang Deqiang believes that thanks to the excellent properties of NovuSiC® EJBS™, it can bring high-reliability and more cost-effective solutions to the vast fields of photovoltaics, DC fast charging, etc.

Taking the Boost PFC application scenario of an 1100V photovoltaic system as an example, under the same application conditions, after adopting NovuSiC® EJBS™, the efficiency of the entire system can be improved by 0.8% , and the temperature rise of the silicon-based IGBT and SiC diode can be reduced by 6°C and 13°C respectively , and the overall power density has been greatly improved.

In terms of DC charging piles, taking the Vienna rectifier application scenario of a 20kW charging pile as an example, after adopting NovuSiC® EJBS™, under the same application conditions, the system efficiency can be improved by 1.05% , the switching loss can be reduced by 91% , and the total loss can be reduced by 50% .

In the field of energy storage power supply and LED lighting, silicon-based MCR® will be able to further help customers improve product performance and reduce costs.

For example, in the anti-reverse polarity application scenario of energy storage, under the same application conditions, after using Rongsi's MCR® device, the system loss was reduced by 16% , the device junction temperature was reduced by 10℃ , and the charging efficiency was increased by 1.25% .

In the high-frequency rectification application scenario of energy storage, under the same application conditions, after using Rongsi's MCR® devices, the total system loss is reduced by 18.7% , the device junction temperature is reduced by 13°C , and the output efficiency is increased by 0.27%; if the loss remains unchanged, the frequency can be increased by 50% .

Currently, magnetic LED lighting is very popular, but due to the narrow and long track space, new device technology is urgently needed to reduce the size of the power supply and improve energy efficiency.

Rongsi provides the following two solutions for high-efficiency LED lighting. In high-frequency rectification applications, after using MCR® products, the maximum efficiency of >94% is achieved at an output power of 350W and a resonant frequency of 200kHz . And at an output power of 50W and an operating frequency of 48kHz, the maximum efficiency can be achieved at 90% .

As a leading SiC power device supplier in Sichuan Province, the Rongsi team has rich experience in power devices and vigorously promotes the industrialization of SiC device products from aspects such as product design, manufacturing process, packaging technology and system application .

In addition to providing world-leading power device products, Rongsi also pays great attention to polishing the details of the company's customer service. Rongsi's vice president of marketing Liao Yunjian revealed that Rongsi attaches importance to planning, coordinating, operating, controlling and optimizing the entire supply chain system, with the goal of achieving six "corrects" , namely: delivering the right products required by customers to the right place at the right time, in the right quantity, with the right quality and in the right state, so as to optimize the total cost.

Liao Yunjian said that Rongsi has two goals in doing this, including: to maximize customer satisfaction (improve delivery reliability and flexibility); to optimize the overall process quality of the enterprise (eliminate error costs and eliminate abnormal events).

SiC device products play an indispensable role in 5G communications, new energy vehicles, green energy, rail transit and other fields by virtue of their material advantages. Rongsi said that they will take one step at a time in the future to achieve leadership in core technologies, further expand the power device business, build China's leading power semiconductor R&D and manufacturing base in Sichuan, and contribute to the SiC industry ecosystem.

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