Last December at Electronica, Shandong-based SICC surprised the world with the first 300mm SiC substrate. While 300mm for silicon wafers and analog power is old news (high voltage IGBT products fabricated on 300mm wafers started coming out in the late 2010s), the industry in the US and Europe was just starting to move to 200mm. While SiC in China may be looking to 300mm, there’s also a potential excess of 150mm wafers, and in the rest of the world the EV market slowdown is leading to stagnating SiC sales.
But these diverging paths and potential influx of cheap wafers could make for some unexpected trends in the near future. Wolfspeed may have kicked off the 200mm SiC boom when they announced plans to build the world’s first 200mm fab back in 2019 (which opened in 2022) but since then, their key competitors have all followed suit: Rohm, Infineon, ST, and onsemi have all started manufacturing power devices on 200mm SIC lines, with Mitsubishi planning to start in September 2025. This article examines today’s SiC electronics wafer market, weighing 3 issues to keep an eye on for the future: market demand, (over?)supply, and geopolitics.
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