Is the cost per watt lower than silicon in 2023? After the charging head, electric vehicles are the next battlefield for GaN
Electric Vehicle Gallium Nitride
As the demand for fast charging of mobile phones and other electronic products increases, the charging power of these devices is constantly rising, and gallium nitride (GaN) has played an indispensable role in the fast charging trend of mobile devices. In recent years, in the high-power charging heads of mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and OPPO, gallium nitride has even become a "synonym" for fast charging.

Behind these terminal manufacturers vigorously promote the application of gallium nitride, they have to mention the gallium nitride power chip supplier Nanomicro Semiconductor. Recently, Nanomicro Semiconductors announced that it has successfully landed on Nasdaq with an enterprise value of more than US$1 billion by merging with Live Oak II Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation (SPAC).

In a recent media communication meeting, Zha Yingjie, Vice President and General Manager of China of Nanomicro Semiconductors, shared the company’s successful listing: “Navi is the first company in the world to go public from a start-up within 7 years. The power semiconductor company whose entire enterprise value has exceeded 1 billion US dollars is unique in the world, and we have brought tremendous changes to the entire industry through technological revolution. This is something we are very proud of."

Breakthrough from the consumer sector, the Chinese market accounted for 70% of revenue

"Our goal is to improve the efficiency of the entire power key industry. We believe that gallium nitride will become a technology that will change the rules of the industry."

"The switching speed of gallium nitride devices is 20 times faster than that of silicon devices, and the volume and weight of gallium nitride chargers are reduced by nearly three times compared with silicon chargers, and the efficiency can be increased by 40%. The same volume can transmit three times The charging speed of silicon devices increases three times per second, so gallium nitride chargers can charge three times faster than commonly used silicon chargers."

This is gallium nitride.

Zha Yingjie, Vice President and General Manager of China, Nanomicro Semiconductors

It is also a third-generation semiconductor, and the commercialization process of gallium nitride is much later than that of silicon carbide. According to Zha Yingjie, the founding team of Nanomicroelectronics has conducted in-depth research on gallium nitride since 2003, but the actual mass production of the entire process was at the time node around 2014. This process has been studied for about 10 years. time. "Nanomicro was established at that time. We used our applications in processes, materials and systems to develop enhanced high-power devices."

However, it took 5 years from mass production in 2014 to the real start of shipments in 2019. For this period of time, Zha Yingjie told the electronic enthusiast network: "The high-frequency system was very new at that time. The high-frequency system included magnetic materials, the design of the transformer, the coordination of the controller, and the new control in the controller. Method changes. Like traditional silicon, we use low-frequency methods. Now that we have gallium nitride, we use soft switching technology. When the efficiency continues to improve, the switching loss is almost close to zero. Therefore, we will keep up. The cooperation of the company’s controller products was also from 2014 to 2018. Everyone worked collectively and gave birth to the perfection of the entire ecology. Starting in 2018, the ecology and manufacturing process have finally been improved."

2018 is also the year when Nanomicro China established its first application and sales center in Shenzhen. The Shenzhen team is mainly composed of dozens of fast chargers including Xiaomi, Dell, Lenovo, LG, Amazon, OPPO, Anker, and Belkin. , Adapter manufacturers provide solutions and technical support. Zha Yingjie said: "At first, we only had two people squeezed into a small office, but now we have the most important application team in China, covering an area of ​​more than 1,000 square meters.".

In the same year, Nanomicro also established a GaNFast application design center in Hangzhou; in 2019, Nanomicro established a Shanghai office in Shanghai. This is also the first power chip design center established by Nanomicro outside of Los Angeles, which carries the entire future of Nanomicro China. The important task of IC design; Last year, Nanomicro also set up a team including sales, technical support and other functions in Taiwan in 2020.

In fact, so far, China has more than 40% of the entire staff of Nawei. This year, more than 50% of new recruits worldwide are in China, and more than 70% of revenue comes from China.

For the consumer terminal customers whose customers are mainly from China, Zha Yingjie believes that in the consumer field: "The main body of consumer products is in China. In fact, all gallium nitride companies have a dream from the beginning to do everything. This is All the dreams of being a GaN peer. Our direction has become more and more focused. We believe that in the consumer field, its verification cycle is relatively short. It is very important for startups to generate short-term profits. It's the first one."

"Second, I can verify the reliability of the product in this huge consumer market. We have now shipped 30 million goods, which is an increase in confidence. Why choose China? It is clear that we started with Customers like Anker and Baseus cooperate because they have a high acceptance of innovative products. They can quickly make smaller and more efficient chargers on Amazon and in domestic e-commerce. To verify this product, the actual results can also see that they like this product very much."

"Third, we are not obsessed with short-term success, but quickly transfer all our energy and resources to the first-class manufacturers. These first-class manufacturers are not only Chinese, but also global. I just mentioned Nawei has been cooperating with more than 90% of the world’s first-class customers, first-class mobile phone and notebook manufacturers."

Regarding the future plans of Nanomicro, Zha Yingjie revealed to the electronic enthusiast network that it will further increase the sales and R&D team's ability to cover the entire global market, and expand the entire chip design team. However, Zha Yingjie also admitted that many IC personnel are becoming more and more difficult to recruit, so in the future, they will operate in the form of a combination of overseas resources and newly recruited domestic personnel.

GaN cost turning point! After the adapter, the car is the next main battlefield of Nanotech

"Gallium nitride will become the future of mobile phone charging. This is what Nawei talks about and what customers talk about." Zha Yingjie said that the current global shipments of mobile phone and notebook chargers are about 2.5 billion a year, except In addition, there are adapters such as audio and home appliances. The actual shipments far exceed 2.5 billion. In the adapter market, the annual scale of gallium nitride exceeds 2.5 billion US dollars.

He revealed to the electronic enthusiast network that, in fact, Nawei has cooperated with more than 90% of the world's first-line adapter OEM/ODM manufacturers. The main customers in the retail market are Anker, Aukey, Ravpower, Baseus, Green Alliance, Belkin and other world-renowned companies. Brand, and there are more than 150 projects in development at the same time.

On the cost issue that everyone is most concerned about, Zha Yingjie said that by 2023, the entire GaN technology will be cheaper than the cost per watt of silicon.

In addition to consumer adapters, Nanomicro will also make breakthroughs in the fields of automobiles, servers, solar energy, and energy storage. Among them, automotive is an area where Nano and Micro will invest on a large scale. For example, starting in the fourth quarter of this year, Nano and Micro has set up the first global R&D center for electric vehicle-related application products in Shanghai; 320 million yuan from listing transactions U.S. dollar earnings will also invest part of the funds in the electric vehicle market. Zha Yingjie revealed that more experts in the field of electric vehicles will join Nanomicro in the future.

It is predicted that in an electric vehicle, the market opportunity for components that can potentially be applied to gallium nitride exceeds $250. By 2025, the total value of the market opportunity for gallium nitride power chips in electric vehicles is expected to exceed $2.5 billion per year.

Zha Yingjie told e-enthusiasts.com that nano-micro automotive products have been delivered to customers in the fourth quarter of this year, and all tests have been completed. According to the current project development schedule, mass production will begin in 2025.

"Nanomicro's vision is to become a leader in a new generation of power semiconductors." Zha Yingjie said, not only gallium nitride itself, nanomicro hopes to have a broader space in many fields.

At present, Nanomicro has become the only gallium nitride company in the world that can provide complete solutions from 20W to 20KW. The future of gallium nitride can be expected. When electric vehicles, data centers, solar energy and other industries gradually phase out silicon-based power chips in the future, the high efficiency of gallium nitride can truly elevate power applications to a new level.