Will Si SJ MOSFETs Maintain their Lead Over GaN Power Devices?

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

SJ MOSFET components, a Si technology, were commercially released for the first time in 1998 by Infineon Technologies. This year, the company will announce the seventh generation. Though new players are entering the market, historical players are willing to maintain their lead by decreasing production cost as much as possible or by introducing different technologies.
On the other side, GaN on Si HEMTs offer new capabilities, such as the possibility of working at higher frequencies and increasingly competitive manufacturing costs. GaN on Si HEMTs are good candidates to enter the 600/650V power device sector. But at the same time, improvements in silicon SJ MOSFET components will keep them on the market and drive them to become more standardized and popular.

Amid this highly competitive landscape, Yole Développement (Yole) and its sister company, System Plus Company (System Plus), offer their vision of the power electronics industry with a comprehensive collection of market, technology, reverse engineering and costing analysis (more info available at i-micronews). The two partners have built a dedicated program of presentations, panel sessions and debates.

Yole analysts and System Plus engineers combine their knowledge of the industry and their technical expertise to provide valuable analysis of the power electronics industry at all levels of the supply chain. This month, System Plus provides a detailed survey on the battle between GaN on Si HEMT and Si SJ MOSFET technologies. In this new report titled GaN on Si HEMT vs. SJ MOSFET: Technology & Cost Comparison, System Plus’ experts cover more than 30 power devices from different device manufacturers. The report includes a detailed description of manufacturing processes and materials, packaging structures, component design, die size, electrical performance, current density and more.

Dr. Elena Barbarini, Senior Cost Engineer at System Plus and author of the analysis, says of on the results, “GaN HEMT clearly offers better technical performance, and GaN RdsonA costs 40% less than Si SJ MOSFET on average. However, to deal with the competition, MOSFET devices are continually improving performance and keeping costs competitive.”
Will Si SJ MOSFETs maintain their lead and stay attractive compared to GaN technologies? The battle is raging.
System Plus’ experts and Yole analysts give their analysis of the story. Yole analysts underscore the attractiveness of low-voltage applications, a US$8.337 billion market in 2014, and the fierce competition between SJ MOSFET and GaN technologies. At the opposite end, for higher voltages, applications are less cost-driven and the competing technology, SiC , is more appealing.

“The manufacturing processes selected by each company are key, especially at the packaging level,” comments Véronique Le Troadec, Laboratory Engineer, at System Plus.“And these technical choices strongly impact the price of the device.” Indeed, in this fast-moving, competitive environment, industrial companies are focusing their strategy on developing new manufacturing technologies and coming up with attractive power devices for end users. With these new technologies, power electronics companies are seeking to decrease device cost and improve performance:

• Infineon Technologies and STMicroelectronics have adopted similar approaches using multiple epitaxy and implantation processes, whereas Toshiba fostered a new solution using deep trench and epi filling processes. 
    
• Transphorm and GaN Systems also developed their own technologies, as well as special packaging. GaN Systems chose embedded-die packaging technology for its power device components, collaborating with AT&S to do so. Packaging has clearly and gradually become an inescapable way to decrease manufacturing costs and attain competitive prices.
  However, despite of this huge push in innovation, we are not likely to see a significant decrease in power device prices in less than 5 years, System Plus states in its comparative analysis of GaN vs. Si power devices.

“The comparison of GaN vs. Si MOSFET by System Plus’ engineers is an impressive investigation of the current power electronics devices available on the market today,” asserts Pierric Gueguen, Business Unit Manager at Yole. “We disassembled more than 30 power devices to identify and understand the latest innovations. This report presents a high-added-value benchmark of power electronics solutions. Many technologies are in competition with each other in this extraordinary market dynamic. System Plus’ strategic analysis is a powerful tool for companies to help them make the right choice.”