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IGBTs and Modules to Drive Growth at Mitsubishi

November 24, 2017 by Paul Shepard

During a recent briefing in Tokyo, Toru Sanada, Executive Officer in charge of Semiconductors & Devices at Mitsubishi Electric presented the company's intent to focus on growing sales in European and Chinese markets while maintaining high market share in Japan. The goal is to push overseas sales to 60% of the total by 2022.

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The company intends to pursue product differentiation in both silicon and SiC based devices and modules. Silicon technology development will be focused for more cost-sensitive applications while SiC efforts will focus on high-performance for value-added applications.

Specific areas of focus for SiC will include: lower power loss (70% less than Si), high-frequency switching (100kHz class), and high temperature operation (200 degrees C class systems).

To maintain its number one market position in integrated power modules (IPMs) the company will:

  • Focus on energy storage, charging, and EV buses as new markets.
  • Increase development of strategic original packages in addition to industrial-standard packages
  • Increase its development of intelligent products (for IoT)
  • And continue to develop products and synergies with Vincotech in Germany

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In the area of SiC, Mitsubishi will pursue two avenues of technology development:

1) Trench MOSFETs for smaller size, low losses and high reliability. The gate is placed on wall of trench formed downward and cell density improved/refined with aim of lowest loss in the industry. And original field alleviating structure employed to improve reliability.

2) MOSFETs with built-in Schottky diodes (SBD) for smaller size and lower cost devices. This is a Mitsubishi Electric original technology where chip is miniaturized by building SBD into MOS. This is expected to be especially effective for high-voltage devices and has approximately 60% surface area reduction for 3.3kV devices.

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In addition to continued improvements in Si IGBTs and SiC MOSFETs, Mitsubishi is pursuing new-material power devices, such as vertical GaN and gallium-oxide, in addition to SiC-IGBTs. The detailed briefing can be downloaded here.

Worldwide Market Growth (source: Mitsubishi, click on image to enlarge)