Currently, 5G is entering a period of accelerated development. 5G will go deep into all walks of life, further solve the problem of connecting things and promote the digital transformation of industries. The communication industry develops a generation every 10 years. Compared with previous communication technologies, 5G business requirements have undergone major changes, which also makes communication chips face new challenges .

First of all, due to the rapid growth of data scale, improving computing power has become the top priority for the development of 5G. The perception layer of the 5G massive Internet of Things, the improvement of connection speed and the reduction of delay will greatly drive the growth of data volume. Therefore, in addition to having communication functions, communication chips also need to have powerful computing capabilities to meet the needs of profound changes in network architecture under cloud-network integration.

Second, chip design complexity continues to increase. 5G achieves the improvement of spectrum utilization through complex coding, and multi-channel, high frequency and large bandwidth jointly promote the increase of data throughput. The diverse application scenarios of 5G and the demand for low power consumption make chip design very complicated.

Finally, benefiting from the 5G network, high-performance processors and optical devices for edge computing have broad prospects for development, but the domestic chip supply chain is still insufficient, and there is still a big gap between industrial scale commercialization and product performance compared with foreign companies.

Challenges and opportunities coexist. While the development of 5G brings challenges, it also promotes domestic semiconductor innovation and progress.

Development Trend of Semiconductor Technology Innovation

The huge storage market demand brought by 5G has made China the world’s largest semiconductor consumer market. The semiconductor industry is the core supporting industry of my country’s science and technology, and the gallium nitride (GaN) electronic device with the advantages of high power density, high efficiency and low power consumption is called the core of the “third-generation semiconductor” and is the core of 5G communication and the Internet of Everything. key elements of .

The third-generation semiconductor technology has outstanding advantages in thermal conductivity, radiation resistance, breakdown electric field, electron saturation rate, etc. It is the “core” of solid-state light sources, power electronics, and microwave radio frequency devices. New energy grid connection, smart grid, high-speed rail transit, new energy vehicles and other fields have broad application prospects.

The global third-generation semiconductor industry is dominated by the United States, Japan, and Europe. Among them, the United States has a relatively complete industrial chain, especially in the field of silicon carbide. , Devices, Japan is leading in equipment and module development.

There is still a large gap between my country and the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries in terms of first-generation and second-generation semiconductor technology, but in the third-generation semiconductor, after ten years of hard work, the gap between my country and these countries is relatively small. At the same time, the domestic market has a large capacity, and the prospect of third-generation semiconductor technology is promising.

Gallium nitride is a relatively new wide-bandgap compound semiconductor for commercial use. Its power efficiency, power density, and ability to handle a wider frequency range make it ideal for massive MIMO base stations . Gallium nitride has some good characteristics, which can better support the lightweight of electronic products.

• High breakdown electric field strength. This greatly improves the current density and withstand voltage capacity of the device, and reduces the conduction loss.
• Wide band gap and large forbidden band. This means GaN can be used for high power applications.
• High thermal conductivity. Gallium nitride has excellent heat dissipation performance, and the device integration and power density are higher than traditional components.
• The electronic saturation drift is fast, and it can work at a higher frequency.
• The dielectric constant is small, which can reduce the leakage current of the integrated circuit and the capacitance effect between the wires.
• Stable chemical properties.
• High hardness.

Policy Support Promotes Domestic Industry Prosperity

The state has provided continuous policy support for the development of the third-generation semiconductor industry. As early as 2016, the State Council issued the “Notice of the “13th Five-Year” National Science and Technology Innovation Plan”, which mentioned for the first time the need to accelerate the research and development of third-generation semiconductor chip technology and devices; in June 2019, the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission are encouraging Foreign investment enterprises supporting the introduction of SiC ultrafine powder have been added to the foreign investment list; in November 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “Guidelines Catalog for the First Batch of Application and Demonstration of Key New Materials”, including GaN single crystal substrates, GaN epitaxial wafers for power devices, and SiC Epitaxial wafers, SiC single crystal substrates and other third-generation semiconductor products have entered the catalog; in December 2019, the State Council clearly requested in the “Yangtze River Delta Region-Integrated Development Plan” to speed up the cultivation and layout of the third-generation semiconductor industry and promote the high-speed manufacturing industry. quality development.

With policy support, the domestic semiconductor industry continues to develop. At present, my country has formed a number of third-generation semiconductor industry clusters in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, and Fujian Delta, especially the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta. innovation hub.

Taking Jiangsu Province as an example, the “14th Five-Year Plan” of Jiangsu Province puts the third-generation semiconductors as the focus of the layout, and has cultivated Navitas Technology, Innosec, Zhongke Hanyun, Huarui Micro Integrated Circuits, Suzhou Energy Technology Co., Ltd. Xun Gaoneng Semiconductor and many other excellent companies.

In the Pearl River Delta, the third-generation semiconductor technology is also the focus of Guangdong’s “14th Five-Year Plan”. Guangdong Province has made it clear that it will set up a semiconductor and integrated circuit industry investment fund with an initial scale of 20 billion yuan to support technological innovation in the field of semiconductors and integrated circuits, and create a 200 billion-level chip design industry cluster with Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai as the core. Among them, Shenzhen, as a national third-generation semiconductor technology innovation center, has established a number of important platforms such as the third-generation semiconductor device key laboratory, and has become a domestic semiconductor product sales, distribution and design center.