As one of the core materials of third-generation semiconductors, silicon carbide (SiC) has become a strategic focus in the global high-end semiconductor industry. Over the past several years, the rapid commercialization of electric vehicles, photovoltaics, and energy storage has driven the initial large-scale adoption of SiC, establishing the industry’s first growth curve.
As the AI computing revolution accelerates, however, new application scenarios—including data center infrastructure upgrades, advanced packaging, and AR smart devices—are emerging rapidly. The SiC industry is therefore entering a new cycle driven by both new energy and AI, opening a second growth curve with broader application potential and stronger long-term demand.
1. Outstanding Material Properties Create a Long-Term Foundation
Compared with conventional silicon-based materials, silicon carbide offers outstanding physical properties, including a high critical breakdown field, high thermal conductivity, high saturation electron drift velocity, and a wide bandgap. These characteristics give SiC significant advantages under high-temperature, high-voltage, high-frequency, and high-efficiency operating conditions.
With lower energy losses, higher power-conversion efficiency, and improved thermal performance, SiC devices can overcome several performance limitations of conventional semiconductor materials. This makes SiC an important material platform for high-end industrial manufacturing, new energy, AI computing infrastructure, and advanced intelligent devices.
Driven by these performance advantages, SiC has already become deeply integrated into major new-energy applications. It is widely used in electric vehicle traction inverters, photovoltaic inverters, energy-storage power conversion systems, and high-end industrial power supplies, helping improve energy efficiency, reduce system losses, and support the continued development of the new-energy industry.
2. The First Growth Curve Remains Strong: New Energy Continues to Build the Core Market
New energy remains the foundation of SiC’s commercial adoption and its first major growth engine.
l In electric vehicles, SiC MOSFETs can improve the efficiency of electric-drive systems while reducing system size and weight. These advantages can contribute directly to improved driving range and have made SiC an increasingly important technology for high-end EV platforms and higher-voltage vehicle architectures.
- In photovoltaic and energy-storage applications, SiC devices can reduce power-conversion losses and improve overall system efficiency and economic performance. This makes them well suited to the ongoing development of grid-parity photovoltaics and large-scale energy-storage systems.
- From a policy perspective, China continues to support the development of third-generation semiconductor technologies. Wide-bandgap semiconductors, including SiC, remain an important direction for semiconductor industrial development, creating a favorable environment for technological advancement, capacity expansion, and supply-chain localization.
- From a market perspective, the global SiC industry continues to expand rapidly. According to industry research data, the global silicon carbide market reached approximately $4.1 billion in 2024, representing year-on-year growth of more than 28%. Commercialization across key segments such as SiC substrates and epitaxial materials continues to accelerate, while demand from the new-energy sector continues to provide a strong foundation for the industry.
3. The Second Growth Curve: AI Computing Opens a New Demand Cycle
As demand for AI model training and inference continues to grow rapidly, global computing infrastructure is undergoing a major transformation. Traditional silicon-based power-supply and thermal-management architectures are increasingly challenged by the high power density and energy requirements of next-generation AI systems.
With its high-voltage capability, low switching losses, and excellent thermal performance, silicon carbide is becoming an increasingly important material for the evolution of AI computing infrastructure, opening a new second growth curve for the SiC industry.
AI data centers are moving toward higher-voltage DC power architectures, including 800 V high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) systems. The high breakdown voltage and low-loss characteristics of SiC devices make them well suited to high-voltage and high-frequency power-conversion applications, helping improve power-conversion efficiency while reducing energy consumption and thermal-management requirements.
Potential applications include solid-state transformer (SST) systems, AI power-supply units (PSUs), high-voltage DC converters, totem-pole PFC stages, and front-end power architectures for GPU systems. In high-density computing environments, these technologies can support higher power levels while improving overall power-delivery efficiency.
Beyond AI computing infrastructure, new SiC applications are also emerging across other advanced technology sectors:
1. In advanced packaging, SiC’s high thermal conductivity offers potential for addressing thermal-management challenges associated with high-performance GPUs and other high-power-density semiconductor devices.
2. In AR glasses and other intelligent wearable devices, SiC’s optical, thermal, and lightweight-material characteristics create potential opportunities for next-generation optical and electronic architectures.
The combination of these emerging applications is gradually changing the growth dynamics of the SiC industry—from a market primarily driven by new energy toward a broader ecosystem supported by multiple high-value application scenarios.
4. Supply-Side Evolution: Larger SiC Substrates and Accelerating Localization
Within the SiC value chain, the substrate is one of the most technically demanding and economically significant components. Substrate performance and manufacturing capacity have a direct impact on the overall development of the SiC industry.
The industry is currently moving through a critical transition from large-scale 6-inch production toward wider adoption of 8-inch substrates, while research and technology development for even larger wafer sizes continues.
Larger-diameter substrates can improve wafer utilization and reduce manufacturing costs per device, making them an important direction for the industry’s continued scaling and commercialization.
At the same time, the global SiC supply chain is undergoing significant structural changes. While established international manufacturers continue to play an important role in the market, Chinese SiC manufacturers are rapidly expanding their technological capabilities and production capacity, supported by a mature semiconductor supply chain, strong domestic demand, and sustained investment in R&D.
Several leading Chinese manufacturers have already established 8-inch SiC substrate production capabilities, while research and development toward larger-diameter substrates continues. As manufacturing technologies mature, the localization of SiC substrates and related materials is expected to accelerate further.
5. Industry Outlook: Dual Growth Engines for Long-Term Expansion
Overall, the silicon carbide industry is reaching an important transition point between established and emerging sources of demand, with the long-term growth outlook becoming increasingly diversified.
On one side, electric vehicles, photovoltaics, energy storage, and other established applications continue to provide a stable market foundation.
On the other side, the rapid development of AI computing is creating additional demand across data centers, power infrastructure, advanced packaging, and intelligent devices, providing a new source of growth for the SiC industry.
Driven by both new energy and AI computing, silicon carbide has the potential to become one of the most strategically important semiconductor materials over the coming years.
As larger-diameter substrate technologies mature, production capacity expands, and supply-chain localization accelerates, companies with capabilities spanning substrates, epitaxy, device manufacturing, and advanced SiC materials are positioned to participate more deeply in this evolving market.
Semicera’s SiC Material Supply Capabilities
Semicera focuses on the development and commercial supply of advanced silicon carbide semiconductor materials, with particular expertise in large-diameter and customized SiC substrates.
Semicera can supply 2-inch to 12-inch silicon carbide substrates, including both conductive and semi-insulating grades, for research, development, and production applications.
Based on specific customer requirements, Semicera can also provide customized SiC substrates with special crystallographic orientations, thicknesses, and other non-standard specifications.
These materials are designed to support a wide range of applications, including:
- · New-energy power devices
- · AI computing and high-performance power electronics
- · RF and high-frequency communications
- · Advanced semiconductor packaging
- · Photonics and optoelectronics
- · Semiconductor research and development
Through flexible customization and material engineering capabilities, Semicera aims to provide customers with highly adaptable and stable SiC material solutions for both R&D and commercial applications.
Post time: Sep-14-2026