Public Funding for Clas-Sic Wafer Fab Limited

ASSIST aims to establish a sovereign supply chain to empower the UK with a capability for higher voltage Silicon Carbide (SiC) devices at voltage and current ratings that are significantly differentiated from devices currently available on the market. The project will establish manufacturing readiness across three levels of the supply chain to create end to end capability that covers wafer fabrication, device packaging and power electronic converter manufacture. Building on the success of a previous DER project SiC-MAP, Clas-SiC will refine a Process Design Kit to establish capability for 3300V SiC MOSFET manufacture. Alter UK will augment their established plastic encapsulation process capability to establish a packaging process for the SiC devices that delivers low to medium level device volumes at costs synonymous with high volume offshore assembly. Both processes will enable capability across the wider UK PEMD community. Wide Band Gap devices, such as SiC MOSFET, enable realisation of high performance power electronic converters. As the UK looks to address the challenge of meeting the increase of electricity demand that will take place with the widespread adoption of Heat Pumps and Electric Vehicles, power electronics will play a central role to delivering solutions that provide the necessary flexibility for the electricity distribution network to meet that need. The realisation of high voltage, high current SiC MOSFETs through ASSIST will transform the proposition for Solid State Transformer (SST) to realise a cost effective and highly efficient compact solution to that unlocks this significant opportunity. Turbo Power Systems will productionise an SST module using 3300V devices that greatly simplifies the already established proposition usings available 1200V devices. The eligible project costs are £1,618,824 across four partners - Clas-SiC Wafer fab, Alter Technology UK, Turbo Power Systems and the Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult, for which £1,093,472 funding contributions is sought.

Project CELERITAS will develop ultra-fast charging batteries for Electric and Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicles to accelerate their market acceptance by addressing consumer concerns over range and charge time. CELERITAS will also develop the UK supply chain to allow UK battery electric-vehicle and mild-hybrid electric-vehicle manufacturers to achieve post-Brexit requirements of \>50% parts sourced from UK suppliers within 3 years. A Consortium of Sprint Power Technology Ltd, AMTE Power plc, Clas-SiC Wafer Fab Limited, Eltrium Limited, UK Lubricants (BP plc) and BMW Motorsport GmbH will deliver the £10.57 million project, £5.28 million of which will be funded through the APC.

Project SiC-MAP, **S**ilicon **C**arbide **M**OSFET **A**pplications unlocked by **P**DK, takes the 1200V planar SiC MOSFET process, which Clas-SiC is developing, and develops it further to include 1700V and 3300V capability. Once the 1700V and 3300V capabilities have been demonstrated, SiC-MAP will then go on to extract relevant electrical parameters from the fabricated SiC MOSFET's (including reliability) along with design and layout parameters, into a Process Design Kit (PDK) (a PDK is quite simply a menu of options which the designer can choose from to construct his device, along with a set of limitations he must abide within so that the device can be feasibly fabricated and be expected to pass basic reliability testing). The PDK will then be made generally available such that customers with a custom power device requirement can use this PDK to define their device which can then be fabricated at Clas-SiC Wafer Fab in Scotland using standard design elements, process modules and processes. Having a PDK available for SiC power devices is not an option which is known to be available in commercial SiC power device foundries (but it is a very common practice within the silicon integrated circuit industry). The lack of a PDK means that customers are limited to selecting standard devices off the shelf, from manufacturers such as Cree or Infineon, or commissioning a custom product of their own design, which can be lengthy, expensive, and not without risk. Innovation lies in Clas-SiC's PDK which will initially enable customers to have 1200V SiC MOSFET devices tailored to their specific requirements using established design elements, modules and processes which have had basic reliability proven. For the customer, this will de-risk and shorten the time to market for New Product Introduction (NPI).

Public description Most vehicles run on fossil fuels like petrol or diesel. Their exhaust gases are responsible for most of the carbon dioxide (associated with global warming) and particulate emissions (that can cause athsma) in the UK at present. Making these vehicles electrically driven moves all emissions away from the tailpipe of the vehicle, and if renewable energy is used to charge the vehicle, can completely eliminate the emissions associated with transportation and mobility as well as reducing the UK's dependency on imported fossil fuels. This applies to all modes of transport including automotive, off-highway, rail, marine and aviation. At its core, an electric drivetrain is very simple, with an electric motor providing the tractive power generated from energy stored in a battery. To convert the DC voltage of the battery to the AC voltage required for the motor, power electronics, in the form of an inverter, are required. Further power electronics are also required for use in high power DC/DC converters and rapid chargers. Until recently, the switching devices used for these applications have been based on standard silicon technology. Silicon Carbide is expected to replace the use of silicon in future applications, due to its superior switching speed and efficiency. This also includes in non-transport applications including electrical grid interfaces and renewable energy systems. At present, this technology cannot be made in the UK and is imported, rather than building in the UK and exporting. The aim of this project is to kick-start the manufacture of these high value components, and their resulting systems in the UK. This will protect skilled manufacturing jobs in the UK and provide significant export potential for the associated vehicles and components. The timing for this innovation is perfect, with massive demand expansion predicted over the coming decades as electric cars become mainstream. The opportunity is for the UK to be at the forefront of this revolution. The focus of ESCAPE is to bring together industrial leaders and pioneers from across the supply chain to work as a single coherent team to deliver this vision. We aim to break down many of the barriers that slow down the development cycle time and to capture the full value in the UK. ESCAPE will be supported by academics and engineers who are expert in the area building on over 25 years of research to date.