The 2024 JFS Conference and China International Compound Semiconductor Industry Expo opened at the Optics Valley on April 9. Zhuang Dan, Executive Director and President of YOFC and Chairman of YASC, attended the conference upon invitation, gathered with guests from leading companies in the compound semiconductor industrial chain at home and abroad, and talked about advanced industry topics, third-generation semiconductor technologies and industry opportunities.

Today, the accelerated rise of compound semiconductors represented by third-generation semiconductors is reshaping the international semiconductor industry landscape. In view of its material advantages such as high temperature tolerance, high voltage tolerance, increased frequency and low loss, silicon carbide (SiC) can significantly improve device energy conversion efficiency, reduce energy consumption and lower system costs, emphasized Zhuang Dan. Therefore, SiC devices will gradually replace traditional silicon-based devices and then become the mainstream of future power devices. In his view, there are broad application scenarios for third-generation compound semiconductors in a variety of fields like new energy vehicles (NEVs), photovoltaic energy storage, power grid and rail transit.

“China has the largest application market for third-generation compound semiconductors, so developing third-generation compound semiconductors is of great significance to raise international competitiveness,” said Zhuang Dan in a media interview at the scene. YASC has set itself the mission of “breaking up international monopolies, filling the blanks in China”, and always focused on the SiC power semiconductor product research, development and manufacturing. It has nowadays built a complete 650V-3300V product matrix, and achieved full coverage in various application fields from photovoltaics (PV), energy storage and charging stations to new energy vehicles.

In addition to the existing production capacity of 60,000 SiC wafers a year, YASC is also steadily advancing the Wuhan Base project construction with an annual production capacity of 360,000 SiC wafers, he noted. This project, with a total investment of CNY 20 billion, is expected to be topped out in June this year, and create production capacity in the first half of next year. Once completed, the base will rank the top in silicon carbine production capacity in China, become a fully intelligent world-class benchmark SiC device manufacturing factory, and fuel rapid development of the Chinese silicon carbide industry.