Sanan Semi and Luminus partner on power chip sales
Partnership to bring Chinese SiC power semiconductors to the Americas
Sanan Semiconductor and Luminus Devices (both subsidiaries of Chinese LED giant Sanan Optoelectronics) have signed a deal that makes Luminus an exclusive sales channel in the Americas for power semiconductors.
The companies say the partnership addresses long lead times for SiC wafers, Schottky diodes, and MOSFETs for customers in a wide range of power-related industries.
Sanan, having recently completed construction of a $2B 'Megafab' (pictured above) in Changsha, China, intends to offer customers with products and foundry services with aggressive lead times, as low as eight weeks for most products.
The capacity of the Megafab also positions Sanan as the largest vertically integrated SiC manufacturer in China, and the 3rd largest in the world. Sanan plans to focus on foundry services to support already established semiconductor companies who need a secure supply of SiC substrates, epi wafers or bare die.
In parallel, Sanan offers turnkey solutions of SiC Schottky diodes and SiC MOSFETs to support emerging customers in renewable energy and diverse applications such as industrial power supplies, wind power, energy storage, motor driving, data centese, HVAC, electric vehicle (EV) charging, photovoltaics, and other high power scenarios where the advantages of SiC provide essential robustness, value and efficiency.
Tony Chiang, CEO of Hunan Sanan Semiconductor, comments: "We are excited to leverage the well established Luminus sales team in the Americas, including their regional manufacturers reps and distributors to deliver our wide bandgap technology and products to customers who have been suffering from limited allocation and long lead times in recent years."
The Sanan Semiconductor SiC Megafab starts with the production of raw powders and turns those into SiC boules, which are sliced into wafers, on which epitaxy is grown, then chips are produced and finally at the end of the line is packaging and testing. Sanan is already breaking ground on a mirror image of the Megafab next door which will more than double the capacity by early 2025. All of this is separate from the $3.2B SiC joint venture Sanan announced with ST Microelectronics earlier this year in Chongqing, China.
Mark Pugh, CEO of Luminus Devices, adds: “Since we became part of the Sanan family ten years ago, our worldwide customers have benefitted from the massive scale and advanced technology of our parent company. Now customers in the Americas will enjoy local service, rapid delivery, and technical support from Luminus as we expand into the high growth SiC and GaN power semiconductor materials, foundry, and components markets.”
