The world's largest silicon carbide factory was actually built by a car company?

Recently, Li Yunfei, general manager of BYD's brand and public relations department, revealed that BYD's new silicon carbide factory will become the largest factory in the industry. The factory will be put into production in the second half of this year, with a production capacity of the world's largest, ten times that of the second place.

BYD is one of the first domestic automakers to use silicon carbide chips on mass-produced models. As a car company pursuing full industrial chain autonomy, BYD actually has a very rich layout in the SiC field.

BYD's SiC layout-"Wolfspeed in the car circle"

may be difficult to imagine. As a car company, BYD's layout chain in the SiC field is even more extensive than that of ordinary SiC IDM companies, from substrates, epitaxy, to module packaging. Generally speaking, SiC IDM companies cover chip design, wafer manufacturing, packaging and testing, and some companies will also involve epitaxy. Some leading companies will also layout substrate manufacturing through acquisitions and other means for the sake of stable supply.

For example, Rohm acquired SiCrystal, a German SiC substrate and epitaxial wafer supplier in 2009, and ST acquired Norstel, a silicon carbide substrate manufacturer, in 2019.

As early as 2017, it was revealed in the "Environmental Impact Assessment Report on Silicon Carbide Substrate R&D Project of BYD Auto Industry Co., Ltd." that BYD planned to build a test line for the research and development of silicon carbide substrates in the first phase of BYD's factory in Pingshan. At that time, the planned R&D batches were 30 times a year, and the single R&D volume of silicon carbide substrates was 30 pieces.

In 2020, official news stated that the Third Generation Semiconductor Research Center of BYD Central Research Institute has successfully overcome the full-link process and equipment manufacturing technology of silicon carbide wafer substrates, and the performance of 4-inch silicon carbide wafers has reached the world's advanced level.

BYD's substrate layout has also had new news recently. Huasuo Technology, a silicon carbide equipment manufacturer, revealed that the company successfully won the bid for BYD Research Institute's SiC substrate processing equipment project order in the second quarter of 2024, with an amount of tens of millions of yuan.

However, at present, there is no news of large-scale mass production of BYD silicon carbide substrates, but at least BYD already has the corresponding technical reserves on silicon carbide substrates.

In June last year, the Shenzhen Municipal Ecological Environment Bureau announced the acceptance announcement of the "Environmental Impact Report of BYD Auto Industry Co., Ltd.'s Silicon Carbide Epitaxial Pilot Line Mass Production Project". The announcement shows that BYD plans to build a SiC epitaxial pilot line mass production project at the BYD Auto Production Base in Pingshan District, Shenzhen, with a total investment of approximately 214 million yuan. After the expansion, the SiC epitaxial wafer production capacity will be increased by 6,000 pieces/year, and the total capacity will reach 18,000 pieces/year.

Power module packaging is relatively mature, and self-developed and self-produced SiC MOSFET may be on the car soon.

Since it is a full industrial chain, BYD certainly has not fallen behind in silicon carbide wafer manufacturing. Previously, BYD Semiconductor's prospectus revealed that it plans to build a SiC wafer production line with an annual production capacity of 240,000 pieces, with an investment of 736 million yuan and a planned fundraising of 312 million yuan.

As for SiC MOSFET, BYD has a foundation in the design of power devices such as IGBT. As early as 2018, BYD announced the successful development of SiC MOSFET products. At the end of 2020, BYD revealed that its SiC MOSFET products have been upgraded to the third generation, and the fourth generation is under development.

According to the information obtained from the disassembly, most of the SiC MOSFETs used in BYD's mid-to-high-end models are products supplied by ST. It can be learned that BYD has not yet achieved large-scale self-production of SiC MOSFETs and still needs to purchase from outside.

In terms of power modules, BYD has disclosed a lot of information. At the Beijing Auto Show in April this year, BYD exhibited a 1200V 1040A SiC power module. It is reported that this power module uses advanced double-sided silver sintering technology, which greatly increases the module power by nearly 30% without changing the original package size. It breaks through the technical difficulties of high-temperature packaging materials, high-life interconnection design, high heat dissipation design and vehicle-level verification, and gives full play to the high efficiency, high frequency and high temperature resistance of silicon carbide power devices.

BYD said that the high-power module will be matched with higher-power new energy vehicle platform applications in the future.

Summary:

BYD is currently the only automaker with a full industrial chain layout in the field of silicon carbide. As the world's largest new energy vehicle manufacturer, it will inevitably have huge demand for silicon carbide in the future. However, it is not yet known whether the world's largest silicon carbide factory refers to a wafer manufacturing factory or a module packaging factory. But no matter which one it is, it will cause a certain degree of change to the silicon carbide industry and even the electric vehicle industry after the production capacity is put into place in the future.