Beyond the Wafer: Where Silicon Carbide Needs Innovation
Silicon carbide’s commercial opportunity extends into packaging, materials and the work of making better power systems.
Follow the application, not just the material
Silicon carbide (SiC) offers attractive properties for power electronics. But a promising semiconductor material does not become a successful product in isolation. Customers adopt a complete solution, with requirements for efficiency, reliability, size and cost.
That was the useful investment lens emerging from the second day of CMVC’s Momentum forum, held at portfolio company Global Power Technology in November 2023. Alongside discussion of China’s semiconductor industry, participants explored the materials and packaging needed to translate device capabilities into industrial applications.
Packaging connects the chip to the system
The package must manage heat and provide dependable electrical and mechanical connections. Materials, bonded interfaces and manufacturing processes influence how a power module performs and how reliably it operates.
The forum’s discussion of ceramic substrates and joining materials showed why these adjacent technologies deserve attention. Heraeus shared its power-electronics materials perspective, while Nanotop presented materials for packaging applications. Innovation around the device can be commercially important alongside innovation in the wafer itself.
Cost is a supply-chain question
Scaling adoption means looking at the cost of the complete solution. A material or process may be technically attractive but difficult to manufacture consistently, costly to integrate or slow to qualify.
For investors, the task is to understand where an improvement changes the customer’s economics. A lower-cost joining process, a more dependable interface or a manufacturing method with better consistency may address a specific constraint. Its value depends on evidence from the intended application.
Applications create the route to adoption
Participants identified the need to develop more use cases and reduce costs across the value chain. Those two priorities belong together: an application provides the requirements against which a new technology can be evaluated.
A company building for a clearly defined power-electronics application has a sharper development path than one relying on a broad semiconductor growth forecast. Customer qualification, process integration and repeatable performance are the milestones that make the opportunity concrete.
An investment lens for the wider ecosystem
CMVC invested in Global Power Technology’s Series A in 2017. The Momentum visit offered an opportunity to bring semiconductor manufacturers, materials companies and industrial participants into the same discussion.
The investment lesson is to look beyond the most visible part of a value chain. SiC’s progress can create needs in packaging, thermal management and manufacturing—and those needs can provide focused opportunities for materials entrepreneurs.
This perspective is based on the 2023 forum.
Technical background: cost, reliability and system adoption ↗