SGT MOSFET capacity at full capacity after receiving IDM transfer to 6-inch wafer fab

Industry insiders revealed that Taiwan's 6-inch wafer foundries such as Mosel Semiconductor, Nuvoton Technology, and Epistar are expected to remain fully loaded at least in the first half of this year to meet strong demand for SGT (split-gate trench) MOSFETs in IT applications and automotive diodes for power systems.

According to Electronic Times, the person pointed out that the SGT MOSFET field used to be dominated by international IDMs who owned chip patents, but as the patents expired, IDMs have recently shifted their production focus to high-end automotive MOSFETs to gain more benefits from the growing demand from automotive customers.

This has prompted customers to shift SGT MOSFET orders to Taiwanese suppliers, enabling the latter to benefit from stable shipments of commercial notebook computers, industrial control systems, servers and even 5G base stations.

In addition, with the electrification of automobiles and the introduction of hybrid vehicles, the demand for automotive diodes is also increasing significantly. As a major supplier of automotive alternator diodes, with the support of Mosel Electronics' strong 6-inch wafer foundry capabilities, Pengcheng Technology expects to achieve double-digit growth in automotive diode sales in 2022, sources said.

As for Nuvoton Technology, in addition to its Japanese subsidiary NTCJ developing new high-end automotive battery management chips, it has also signed long-term contracts with customers to use its own 6-inch wafer production capacity to manufacture MOSFETs, power management ICs and automotive diodes for IT applications.