Silicon Carbide Semiconductor Application to Usher in Explosive Growth

Toyota Motor Corp. released the road experiment result of hybrid vehicle equipped with SiC silicon carbide power semiconductor on May 20~22 in the pacific international conference and exhibition center of Yokohama. The experiment started from Toyota city, Japan in February of 2015. Toyota said that, so far "It has been confirmed by the fuel efficiency that improved by 5%. Through the optimization of motor control, we can achieve the fuel efficiency improvement target of 10%".　　

In addition to improve fuel efficiency, the volume of PCU is also expected to drop to about 1/5 of the original through the adoption of the SiC device.

According to the introduction, the original silicon Power semiconductor PCU needs to be equipped with 18~24 Power Card, but now may just need 14 Power Card when using SiC Power semiconductors. Toyota will verify the long-term reliability of the SiC in order to make the selling cars equipped with SiC devices around 2020. About the plan for the SiC transistor is to achieve 200 A magnitude of current capacity by a chip.

Anvil Semiconductor Company of United States announced that they would participate in British electricity infrastructure modernization program worth of a 9.5 million pounds. And the program is set up to deal with the unprecedented changes in the field of energy consumption, production and distribution. The program has got the validation in the western residents electricity distribution company supply network, and will adopt silicon power devices to improve the network capacity, dealing with civil and commercial requirements.