Onsemi moves to 200mm SiC wafers
Onsemi is set to qualify 200mm (8in) silicon carbide wafers later this year with production in 2025.
This comes as onsemi saw revenue of $1.735bn, down $130m on Q1 and $265m on Q2 the previous year, and flat to the end of the year.
“We are still on track to what we said we will qualify 8-inch this year, that’s when I talk about qualifying, it’s substrates all the way through fabs. So that will be qualified this year, starting revenue next year in line with our expectations,” said Hassane El-Khoury, president and CEO, onsemi.
“As reflected by our recent supply agreement with Volkswagen Group, we also continue to strengthen our silicon carbide position in automotive as we ramp production with leading global OEMs in Europe, North America and China.”
However the company saw increasing inventory in the quarter, which is not an encouraging sign and partly comes from the selling of fabs in recent years. The forecast for Q3 is flat in a time of market uncertainty where many other companies are seeing a fall in demand.
“We divested four fabs in a couple of years ago, and it’s $160 million of fixed-cost that we’ll start to recognize as demand picks up and we start manufacturing those products within our existing network,” said El-Khoury. “So we’ve got to bleed through that inventory that we’ve been building for those fab transitions. And as we move that into our network, we start to see that benefit.”
“As we indicated in Q1, we are seeing some stabilization in demand in our core markets. Inventory digestion persists with some pockets improving as customers maintain a cautious stance in 2024,” he said.
“We don’t see a change to the L-shaped curve I talked about in Q1, but we expect parts of industrial, such as Energy Infrastructure to recover in the second half. Among the regions, Asia-Pacific, namely China is recovering, driven by both automotive and industrial.”
“We have been gaining share by securing significant design wins in power, and we have continued to improve our cost structure through ongoing structural changes. All these efforts position us very well in a recovery.”
“In Intelligent Sensing, we continue to invest to sustain our technology and market leadership. We announced the acquisition of SWIR Vision Systems to add disruptive, colloidal quantum-based-dot-based short wavelength infrared technology to our portfolio to further strengthen our industrial and defence product offering. We will leverage our manufacturing and R&D expertise to accelerate the commercialization of this technology with cost-effective and differentiated products for industrial and defence applications.”
The company will be the primary supplier of a complete powerbox to VW as part of its next-generation traction inverter for its Scalable System Platform, SSP. This uses SiC in an integrated module that can scale across all power levels from high-power to low-power traction inverters to be compatible for all vehicle categories. This is driving the multi-year investment in the Czech Republic for a vertically integrated silicon carbide manufacturing facility.
However this strategic expansion is dependent on the European Commission approving incentives.
“Our collaboration with the Czech government on this state-of-the-art facility aims not only to support our European customers, but also positions onsemi as a central piece of the European power ecosystem, further enhancing our supply resilient strategy,” he said.
Onsemi SiC devices are designed into nearly 60% of the BEV models from OEMs who are primarily introducing their 800-volt platforms at the Beijing International Auto Exhibition last quarter. China is the largest and fastest-growing BEV market in the world and Chinese OEMs are adopting onsemi silicon carbide solutions based on the market-leading efficiency of our modules and devices like the M3e we’ve just announced.
In automotive, silicon carbide will continue to outgrow the industry for many years as EVs are adopted, but also as the penetration rate in EVs increases. The latest research reports show that 22% of EVs in production are using SiC, excluding the market leader, only 6% of the EVs worldwide include SiC, but all OEMs are driving adoption to improve range and cost of the vehicles.
This extends into the industrial market with demand expanding beyond energy infrastructure with emerging mass market applications, such as commercial heating, ventilation and air-conditioning. The use of 1200V SiC in HVAC applications leads to more efficient, reliable, and compact systems, reducing energy consumption, improving electromagnetic interference and operational costs. Onsmei says it is working with customers looking to integrate silicon carbide into their next-generation designs with revenue over the next three to five years.
It sees more opportunities in AI data centre racks as the power requirement increases from 40kW to 120kW in 2025. This would boost the addressable content from $2,500 to $9,500.
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