7.5% CAGR 2020-26 for IGBTs

Update: August 6, 2023

The IGBT market is set to grow at a 7.5% CAGR 2020-26  to reach $8.4 billion by 2026, says Yole Developpement, with the IGBT modules segment to represent 81% of the total market in 2026 boosted by EV/HEVs adoption. 

More than 80% of the market will be focused on the 600V-1,200V nominal voltage ranges by 2026. 

At the system level, new IGBT voltage levels are covering new voltage ranges: e.g. the EV inverter move from 400V to 800V, and the PV inverter move to 1,500V.

 Analysts also see lot of technical innovations: new generation of IGBT dies, higher efficiency and lower cost. Packaging is looking for high reliability, lower cost and lower inductance electrical interconnections. 

IGBT is taking advanced of SiC packaging development. At the wafer level, analysts see the 300mm IGBT wafer manufacturing trends and a shift to MCZ silicon material. 

IGBT manufacturers are spread all over the world, but Yole sees also an important growth of Chinese IGBT manufacturers, both foundries and IDMs. 

All major players are investing into IGBT manufacturing capacity increases. The ranking of main IGBT suppliers remains almost unchanged. The top 3 are: Infineon, Mitsubishi  and ON Semi. 

In addition to EV/HEVs, discrete IGBTs and IGBT power modules can be found in applications like industrial motor drives, wind turbines, photovoltaic installations, trains, UPS , EV charging infrastructure and home appliances.

 In 2020, the largest IGBT market segments were industrial applications and home appliances.

 They were closely followed by EV/HEVs, which represented a market of $509 million in 2020 and which will grow with an impressive 23% CAGR between 2020 and 2026. 

This is due to the transition from ICE vehicles to EV/HEVs, which is being strongly driven by governments’ targets for CO2 emissions reductions. 

This transition is further accelerating, due to President Biden’s action plans for the USA as well as the recent EU climate initiative in which all new cars registered in Europe from 2035 will be zero-emission. 

Therefore, the EV/HEV segment share will more than double by 2026. 

“Charging infrastructure is also impacted by government decisions as the deployment of chargers is crucial for the expansion of electric vehicle uptake,” says Yole’s Abdoulaye Ly,  “although charging infrastructure is still a small market for IGBTs, it is expected to increase by more than 300% in the coming five years.” 

The largest IGBT manufacturers including Infineon, Littelfuse andvFuji Electric offer both discrete IGBTs and IGBT power modules. 

Large IDMs vertically integrated into systems offer basically IGBT modules including  Danfoss, Mitsubishi , CRRC and others.

Most companies positioned with their products on the lower-voltage range offer also discrete IGBTs. 

To target the largest IGBT market, all manufacturers offer 600V – 1,200V components, with a new range of products (from 800 to 1,000V). Some manufacturers including Mitsubishi, Toshiba and ON Semi, are looking for differentiation from competitors by offering IGBT devices with “intermediary” nominal voltage levels – such as 1,300V, 1,350V, 2,000V

 Chinese IGBT manufacturers are catching up fast in development, production and in capacity. 

As 200mm fab capacity for power devices is relatively full, manufacturing on 300mm wafers enables higher device production capacity to meet the needs of the growing IGBT market.

 It is not surprising that to increase production volumes over next 10 years all major players are investing in IGBT manufacturing capacity expansions, as the transition to 300mm wafers enables better cost structures to face growing competition with Chinese manufacturers. 

However, there are several Chinese players that are also expanding to 300mm by enlarging their own factories like HHGrace and CanSemi, or by acquisitions of foreign companies.