The European Chips Act represents a strategic response by the European Union to the growing challenges and opportunities in the semiconductor sector. With a planned investment of over €43bn, the goal is to increase Europe’s semiconductor market share from 10% to 20% by 2030
The European Chips Act represents a groundbreaking initiative aimed at bolstering Europe’s semiconductor sector, which is critical for everything from smart devices to electric vehicles. As the world becomes increasingly dependent on technology, the role of semiconductors has never been more pivotal. Recognising this, the European Union has set forth a strategic plan to enhance its position in the global semiconductor landscape. At the heart of this strategy lies the concept of Pilot Lines – dedicated facilities designed to foster innovation and streamline the production of cutting-edge semiconductor technologies.
The EU Chips Act forms the answer of the European Union in the face of two major societal challenges. One is the need for more strategic autonomy, to reinforce the Union’s ability to set its own course amidst shifting global dynamics. The other challenge forms the green and digital twin transition. In this transition, the pace of digitalisation accelerates, and green sustainable developments become the norm to limit climate change. Moreover, both parts of the transition are mutually related. Digital technologies drive the green transition, and this digitalisation process must be done in the most sustainable way. The semiconductor industry, through its enabling technologies and strategic significance, has the key to the Union’s success in these societal challenges.
There are two consequences of the digital and green twin transition. One is the electrification of industries and transport, moving away from carbon-rich energy resources like oil, gas, and coal. The supply to the energy grid changes due to the increased volumes of solar and wind energy. Simultaneously, demand for electricity increases. Handling these novel intensified voltages requires more versatile power systems and grids. The second consequence is that connectivity and data volumes increase rapidly. More data is manipulated and communicated consistently, from consumer electronics like phones and transportation like autonomous-driven vehicles to automated factory lines.
Within the semiconductor industry, the value chain involved in designing, developing, and manufacturing power devices – or power chips – operates at the crossroads of digital and green application areas. A power chip refers to a semiconductor device designed specifically for power management and control applications, typically used in power electronics circuits for efficient energy conversion and regulation. As such, it plays a key role in the electrification of industry and transport. To meet society’s demand following the twin transition, the value chain for power chips focuses on improving energy efficiency and reducing cost.
So-called wide bandgap (WBG) materials replace the conventional silicon in power chips. WBG materials, like silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), have more significant energy gaps between valence and conduction electron bands. These bands determine a material’s electrical properties. The wider bandgap allows WBG materials to withstand higher voltages before breakdown occurs, making them ideal for applications requiring high breakdown voltages. Additionally, while they have higher electron mobility barriers, once electrons are in the conduction band, they can move more freely, enabling fast switching speeds and efficient power conversion in power electronics applications. In other words, compared to silicon, WBG materials can handle higher voltages and frequencies, making them very suitable for the power electronics driving the digital and green twin transition, and even other application areas like telecommunication and radar.
The ability to create electronics of WBG materials is both a key differentiator of the European Union’s semiconductor value chain and an indispensable strategic capability moving forward. The European semiconductor industry excels in market segments driven by wide bandgap material capabilities, such as automotive, industrial, and specific telecommunication areas. Semiconductor manufacturers like Infineon, ST, and NXP are worldwide market leaders and drive the digitalisation and electrification of industry and automotive market segments. (Fig.1)
Through its relevance for Europe’s semiconductor manufacturers, WBG materials contribute to the Union’s strategic autonomy.
Due to the above-mentioned societal challenges, the growth projections of industry and automotive market segments outperform the semiconductor industry’s growth. Between 2021 and 2030, McKinsey estimated a CAGR of respectively 13% for automotive electronics and 9% for industrial electronics. Competition is growing tight, as all major economies face similar societal challenges. As industries and transport electrify, smart grids are needed. The analysis of the WBG material’s power electronics relevance is everywhere the same. The European semiconductor companies compete with Japanese, US, and, increasingly, Chinese competitors. The advent of electric vehicles made by Chinese companies – and increasingly containing Chinese-made semiconductor devices – on the European continent is a sign on the wall. Securing the European lead for the future is imperative, especially in light of the Union’s future strategic autonomy.
WBG materials
With the increasing need for power electronics and better connectivity (telecommunications), WBG materials have gained traction in the semiconductor industry. WBG Power Electronics transformed from a commodity market to a more innovative and sensitive market. The material platforms are, however, not yet as mature as silicon, which has evolved over the past 75 years. Manufacturing processes and architecture developments can be further explored to open novel application areas and improve energy efficiency. More importantly, costs must decrease further. WBG material substrates are still relatively expensive, limiting the market’s adoption of the materials and devices.
Considering the increasing applicability and growing power electronics market, the WBG material platforms will diversify. Each material type caters to distinct needs. As current niche segments increase in size – driven by the twin transition – other materials than silicon or SiC become more effective. This involves the application of gallium-nitride (GaN), polysilicon SiC, SiC-trench versus SiC MOSFET architectures, and the integration in advanced packages to handle heat dissipation more effectively. The European Union should drive the growth and maturation of WBG material platforms in power (industry and automotive) and telecommunication applications through its strong position. A pilot line can help the Union to drive the necessary process, architecture and material innovations from lab to fab effectively.
Over the years, the wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors SiC and GaN have increasingly attracted interest from the scientific and industrial world and are now well-established technologies for more efficient power electronics. However, not all the materials’ potential has been exploited, thus leaving wide margins for improving the current performance of WBG semiconductor-based devices. Furthermore, the ultra-wide-band gap (UWBG) semiconductors, e.g., Ga2O3, AlN, and diamond, have become the subject of intense research with an expected increasing interest soon due to the compounds’ outstanding physical properties.
Heterostructures, heterojunctions, and engineered substrates are a clear path to breaking micro-nanoelectronics’ limits today. Examples like SOI, GaN HEMT, or, more recently, 2D materials illustrate the potential of heterostructures to generate novel generations of higher-performance circuits and enable novel applications. The next revolution steps pass through the association of different materials to fully benefit from the specific advantages proper to each of these semiconductors, and overcome the physical limitations of some of the WBG semiconductors. In addition, the monolithic integration of devices and components to form power or RF essential functions is the key to improving the systems’ performance, monitoring, and safety. Integration of power and RF cells, including several active devices with monitoring sensors and passive components, clearly extends the range of operation (frequency, delivered power) obtained from single devices currently used in most applications.
The Pilot Line aims to significantly expand the European semiconductor industry’s competitiveness by strengthening the entire value chain and enabling the fast adoption of advanced WBG technologies in high-value applications.
The first results from the WBG pilot line will be the improvement of the efficiency of the high–end portion of the advanced power discrete device portfolio in Europe and the development of the related value chain based in Europe.
The second effect will be the creation of new and very innovative product families based on modern semiconductor materials and power devices, which have features and performance that are not covered by the current market.
The WBG pilot line
The WBG pilot line will build on the current facilities operating in Italy, Poland, Sweden, Finland, France, Austria, and Germany. Here, industrial processes will be defined and optimised, and demonstrators will be qualified to be tested on the market. The WBG pilot line will be characterised by the implementation of new manufacturing techniques that enable the integration of different materials to achieve new devices and systems based on composite semiconductor materials.
The WBG pilot line project will greatly benefit from the extensive knowledge existing at the European level in this field, where the distribution of scientific papers on both 4H-SiC and GaN are reported. If we also analyse in more detail this European distribution of scientific papers, we can see that the country that mainly contributed to the development of these materials and of the related technology is the same one of the Pilot Line where an extended activity on these materials has been done in the last 30 years.
The new WBG pilot line will be a new R&D environment involving industrial partners along the value chain, and it will be a common and open pilot line where partners will test materials, equipment, and application-driven device demonstrators. The WBG pilot line will increase and leverage existing private and public investment by creating the necessary ecosystem to translate device demonstrators into marketable products based on power electronics and RF applications.
This WBG Pilot Line is a distributed facility at the European level, and this will give several advantages and some critical issues.
One of the main advantages of the distributed Pilot Line is the fact that all the partners are strongly connected to the industrial and innovation system of the different countries. This strong connection will facilitate the interest of large and small companies in the services of this pilot line. Furthermore, the participation of all the main industrial countries (France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Austria) where several WBG companies have their factories will give easy access to this pilot line to the main European WBG actors (INFINEON, STMicroelectronics, NXP, etc.) and also to a large number of SME and start-ups that are very active in these countries.
The WBG pilot line has been designed as a fully ‘lab-to-fab’ pilot line. Encompassing the total process flow of (future) Wide Band Gap semiconductor manufacturing is the key strength and value of the WBG pilot line. Its focus on industrialisation will enhance collaboration between semiconductor device makers, equipment, and materials suppliers.
As a result, the technological goals, while drawing on the extensive expertise of the partners involved, will be adapted to match the demands of the industry and any other external users who will request access to the pilot line. A portion of the pilot line activities, in each of its nodes, will be driven forward by the expert teams at the RTOs involved, which will work together to define a technological roadmap that extends European leadership in WBG semiconductors at high TRL levels, with an eye to (1) provide industry with the opportunity to test and develop devices in areas closer to market, and (2) extend the technology roadmap in areas with medium TRL levels, for which industry has not yet been directly involved. It will do so by collaborating closely with industrial partners and RTOs from across Europe, developing demonstrators.
The WBG pilot line will primarily extend the roadmap of SiC and GaN technologies to improve the performance of advanced power and/or high–frequency devices covering specific applications (electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, aerospace and defence, industrial motor drivers, wireless communication, fast charging and power suppliers, etc.) aimed at addressing the societal challenges in terms of energy efficiency. Moreover, it will also extend the partners’ existing infrastructure to materials other than SiC and GaN to less mature semiconductors. These will include cubic polytype of SiC (3C–SiC), low–cost polycrystalline SiC, novel GaN-based heterostructures for RF devices, bulk gallium nitride (GaN) or gallium oxide (Ga2O3), novel transition metal nitrides (such as aluminium scandium nitride, AlScN, and aluminium yttrium nitride, AlYN), aluminium nitride substrates (AlN) or diamond. Ga2O3, AlN, and diamond are typically regarded as ultra-wide UWBG-based devices on laboratory scales and, at the same time, bandgap (UWBG) semiconductors and have not yet reached an adequate crystalline quality and/or diameter as that of silicon, SiC, or GaN, i.e., suitable for electronic applications.
The Pilot Line aims to significantly expand the competitiveness of the European semiconductor industry by strengthening the entire value chain and enabling a fast adoption of advanced WBG technologies to high-value applications. To this end, we shall establish an agile and versatile framework supporting the development of advanced packaging solutions, enabling integration and testing of WBG components in application-specific power modules.
The main general objectives of The WBG pilot line are:
To develop advanced processes for materials growth and device fabrication for WBG and UWBG semiconductors;
To develop and demonstrate process flow, with a high level of automation, yield, and throughput, compatible with industrial manufacturing standards;
To develop enabling processes and integration techniques for devices in a cost–effective manufacturing environment;
To design and manufacture in small volumes application-driven device demonstrators to validate their manufacturing readiness level and establish their commercial value and potential for targeted markets.
The pilot line project aims to revolutionise the testing and experimentation of advanced technologies based on current WBG materials (ex. SiC and GaN), introducing new device concepts and architectures, as well as new Ultra-Wide-Band-Gap semiconductors currently not available in the market (AlN and Ga2O3 are just two examples), with the goal of making a significant impact beyond the immediate scope and duration of the project. By providing advanced capacities for testing and experimentation, the WBG Pilot Line will contribute to the short-term to mid-term outcomes and impacts in terms of the availability of these capabilities.
The pilot line will positively impact the development of novel technological approaches in the field of semiconductors to reach the targets imposed by the green electrification of societies. The availability of this pilot line will accelerate the development of more efficient and sustainable electrical systems required for cleaner transportation, more efficient energy management, higher data security, and safer use of electromagnetic signals. The successful implementation of the pilot line is expected to have a significant and far-reaching impact, both in the short to medium term and in the longer term, on several market sectors.
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