News: Microelectronics
10 January 2024
Luminus to bring Sanan’s SiC and GaN power semiconductors to Americas market
Wide-bandgap power semiconductor materials, component and foundry services provider Sanan Semiconductor Co Ltd of Hunan, China has announced Luminus Devices Inc of Sunnyvale, CA, USA — which designs and makes LEDs and solid-state technology (SST) light sources for illumination markets — as its exclusive sales channel in the Americas. Both companies are subsidiaries of China’s Sanan Optoelectronics, the world’s largest LED chip maker.
The firms state that customers in a wide range of power-related industries have suffered in recent years from long lead-times, especially for silicon carbide (SiC) wafers, Schottky diodes and MOSFETs. Having recently completed construction of a US$2bn ‘Megafab’ in Changsha, China, Sanan says that it is now equipped to provide products and foundry services with aggressive lead-times (as low as eight weeks for most products). The Megafab’s capacity also positions Sanan as the largest vertically integrated SiC manufacturer in China, and the third largest in the world, it is reckoned.
Sanan plans to focus on foundry services to support already established semiconductor companies that need a secure supply of SiC substrates, epiwafers or bare die. In parallel, Sanan offers turnkey solutions of SiC Schottky diodes and SiC MOSFETs to support emerging customers in renewable energy and diverse applications such as industrial power supplies, wind power, energy storage, motor driving, data centers, HVAC, electric vehicle (EV) charging, photovoltaics, and other high-power scenarios where the advantages of SiC provide essential robustness, value and efficiency.
“We are excited to leverage the well-established Luminus sales team in the Americas, including their regional manufacturers reps and distributors, to deliver our wide-bandgap technology and products to customers who have been suffering from limited allocation and long lead-times in recent years,” says Tony Chiang, CEO of Hunan Sanan Semiconductor.
The Sanan Semiconductor SiC Megafab’s vertical integration ranges from the production of raw powders and turning them into SiC boules before slicing into wafers, through epitaxial deposition, then chip fabrication and finally packaging and testing. Sanan is already breaking ground on a mirror image of the Megafab next door that will more than double the capacity by early 2025. This is separate from the $3.2bn STMicroelectronics–Sanan SiC joint venture in Chongqing, China that was announced in June 2023.
“Since we became part of the Sanan family 10 years ago, our worldwide customers have benefitted from the massive scale and advanced technology of our parent company,” says Luminus Devices’ CEO Mark Pugh. “Now customers in the Americas will enjoy local service, rapid delivery, and technical support from Luminus as we expand into the high-growth SiC and GaN power semiconductor materials, foundry and components markets.”
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