Michael Dunne, Why Americans Can't Buy the World's Best Electric Car? China;s BYD embodies an industrial model that the US can't compete with. New York Times, July 9, 2025, at page A21 (op-ed)
("It's [government subsidies is] also not the only reason for BYD's success. It can build cars inexpensively thanks to what's known as vertical integration. While most major carmakers source many important parts from outside suppliers, BYD makes almost all of its key components in-house, including batteries, semiconductors, motors and tablet screens, which saves costs and enhances quality control. It developed its cars' operating software, has stakes in mines and mining companies that produce the minerals for its batteries and transports its vehicles around the world aboard its fleet of specially designed car-carrier ships. BYD is also rapidly innovating. This year it unveiled an autonomous driving system that may be as good as Tesla's, if not better, and technology that BYD says can charge cars in just five minutes")
My comment:
(a)
(i) I know nothing about cars.
(ii) I am tired of this kind of argument. Macronomics shows that state capitalism (where a state subsidizes, picks a winner -- not necessarily in that order -- is inefficient, Japan being a prime example.
(b) In print but not online is this introduction of the author: A former General Motors executive, "Michael Dunne is the founder and chief executive of Dunne Insights, an auto industry advisory firm [with expertise in global electric vehicle markets], and the author of the forthcoming"Car Wars," on the the US-China contest for dominance of electric vehicle industry."
(A) On "May 11, 2021, BYD Co, Ltd (002594.SZ) announced that the board of directors passed a resolution that the company intends to spin off its subsidiary BYD Semiconductor and to list it on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's Growth Enterprise Market.
(B) "BYD Semiconductor mainly manufactures IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) related chips. The chip manufacturing process is 45nm * * *
(C) "IGBT is the core chip in the electric car, because of its high design threshold, challenging manufacturing technology, and intensive capital investment.
"Compared with Infineon's IGBT chip, BYD's self-developed chip still lags behind. Infineon’s IGBT has developed to the 7th generation, and BYD's IGBT 4.0 was released at the end of 2018 and is only equivalent to the international 5th generation IGBT.
"In terms of cost, Infineon has a 12-inch production line, while BYD has an 8-inch production line. The larger the wafer, the lower the manufacturing cost per chip.
"In terms of process, the most important process for IGBT chips is the thinning process. Infineon’s IGBT chips can be thinned down to 40μm (micrometers), while BYD's level at the end of 2018 is 120μm.
(ii) insulated gate bipolar transistor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulated-gate_bipolar_transistor
(IGBT; "primarily forming an electronic switch. It was developed to combine high efficiency with fast switching * * * The bipolar point-contact transistor was invented in December 1947[9] at the Bell Telephone Laboratories by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain under the direction of William Shockley," all three of whom jointly received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of transistor in that month of 1947: en.wikipedia.org for transistor)
Specifically what the three invented then was bipolar transistor, as opposed to uni-polar field-effect transistor (FET). The latter had been proposed but nobody could make it work (but after the invention of the former, ways were found to make FET work also.
(d)
(i) A transistor (be it bipolar or FET) by definition is a switch. (On the other hand, there is no direct correlation between a transistor and a bit (which is software).
(ii) A bipolar transistor is made up of BOTH N and P, whereas FET, with N or P.
(iii)
(A) semiconductor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor
("charge carriers, which include electrons, ions, and electron holes * * * After silicon, gallium arsenide [GaA] is the second-most common semiconductor and is used in laser diodes, solar cells, microwave-frequency integrated circuits, and others. Silicon is a critical element for fabricating most electronic circuits. * * * 'n-type' doping * * * 'p-type' doping"/ section 3 Physics of semiconductors, section 3.3 Doping)
(B) The chemical projection for silicon in the preceding section 3.3 is not a typical one in chemistry. See projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection
(section 3 chemistry)
(C) In the same column in the periodic table, 6C, 14Si and 32Ge (germanium) all share the same crystal structure: a pyramid of four equilateral triangles with, say, carbon in each apex (total four apices; apices is Latin plural for noun masculine apex). The pyramid is called tetrahydron in mathematics.
In the (2-dimensional) plane, carbon carbon is represented by
|
-C-
|
, which came out on the same day as
(b) Exclusive: TSMC's GaN Exit Pulls Rug from Under BYD. DigiTimes, July 11, 2025 (In English).
Note:
(a)
(i) 納微半導體 Navitas Semiconductor, Inc (2014- ; based in City of Torrance, Los Angeles County, California)
(ii) About Us. Navitas Semiconductor, undated https://navitassemi.com/about-navitas/
("The name Navitas derives from the Latin word for energy * * * GaN is growing in importance because of its ability to offer significantly improved performance over conventional silicon semiconductors while reducing the energy and the physical space needed to deliver that performance. * * * Navitas is the industry leader in GaN with drive, control and protection in a single easy-to-use integrated circuit (IC). Navitas GaNFast [trademarked] ICs are easy-to-use 'digital in, power out' building blocks that enable up to one hundred times faster switching speeds while increasing energy savings by as much as 40%. * * * [We are] the only pure-play, next-generation power semiconductor company")
(iii) Latin-English dictionary:
* navitas (noun feminine; from [adjective masculine] nāvus + [suffix] -tās [used to form noun (feminine)]): "promptness, assiduity, zeal" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/navitas
(iv) What the heck is power electronics?
(A) Navitas Semiconductor also runs a website https://ganfast.com/ whose home page is succinct: "GaN is the Future [which is page title:]
Silicon chips are history.
Gallium Nitride (GaN) revolutionizes fast charging for all mobile devices: phones, tablets and laptops. Charge 3x faster in half the size and weight")
So Navitas products are chargers, converting AC to DC.
(B) power electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_electronics
The end of introduction in this Wiki page listed four types of power electronics in which "AC to DC (rectifier)" -- that is, the device to convert AC to DC is "rectifier" in jargon. (There is little chance to convert DC to AC, another kind of power electronics.)
(b) 力積電 Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC; 1994- ; based in Hsinchu; world's 8th largest semiconductor foundry)
(c) The report states, "雙方 [Navitas and PowerChip] 其實原在GaN低壓產品，已合作多時。2026年已達100伏產品，未來1~2年內，可望再拉升至中高壓領域合作。 另外，力積電本身並無GaN磊晶（Epi）製程，外傳將交由環球晶（GWC）、蘇州晶湛（ENKRIS）操刀。
(i)
(A) It is clear that 低壓 means lower voltage, and that 高壓 is need to charge electric vehicles fast. No doubt that more chargers for electric vehicles will be needed in the future.
(B) Electric vehicles (EVs) anywhere in the world and by all makers uses DC, so a rectifier is needed to convert AC to DC. All EVs has an "onboard charger" (OBC) to do the task. However, to do the charging faster, a bigger charger will be needed that is housed in charging station which uses voltages higher than 120V AC that the charging station itself converts to DC which is supplied to EVs bypassing EVs' OBC. The highest voltage in a charging station worldwide is 400V AC, though in North America thta is 350V AC.
(ii)
(A) epitaxy 磊晶 or 外延 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitaxy
("The term epitaxy comes from the Greek roots epi (ἐπί), meaning 'above,' and [noun feminine] taxis (τάξις), meaning 'an ordered manner.' One of the main commercial applications of epitaxial growth is in the semiconductor industry, where semiconductor films are grown epitaxially on semiconductor substrate wafers.[4] For the case of epitaxial growth of a planar film atop a substrate wafer, the epitaxial film's [crystalline] lattice will have a specific orientation relative to the substrate wafer's crystalline lattice * * * In the simplest case, the epitaxial layer can be a continuation of the same semiconductor compound as the substrate; this is referred to as homoepitaxy [eg, epitaxial growth of highly pure silicon over substrate silicon or different levels of doping for film and substrate]. Otherwise, the epitaxial layer will be composed of a different compound; this is referred to as heteroepitaxy")
(B)
• GaN-on-Si is a film of Gallium nitride on silicon SUBSTRATE. Silicon is used because it is cheap and stable.
• GaN-on-Si is used mainly in power electronics, radio fequency (RF) semiconductor and LED.
• gallium nitride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_nitride
("GaN transistors can operate at much higher temperatures and work at much higher voltages than gallium arsenide (GaAs) transistors")
(iii) What is the place of epitaxy in semiconductor fabrication? (For Example, is epitaxy done befor etching?) Well, I research for hours and find noting about epitaxy in semiconductor (say, logic or memory chips) and that epitaxy seems to be associated with GaN-on-Si (but more, which ahain is not related to logic or memory chip. This turns out to be correct.
Pete Singer, Epitaxy: An Epic Growth. Semiconductor Digest, Sept 3, 2020 (Singer is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the journal; The top illustration in this page is attributed to Amadine Pizzagalli of Yole Développement, who was not the author of this article). https://www.semiconductor-digest.com/epitaxy-an-epic-growth/
Quote:
(A) "The overall semiconductor equipment market is worth several billion dollars. By contrast, the lithography equipment market for the More-than-Moore (MtM) industry is a small niche representing millions of dollars. However, new emerging markets push MtM devices to new levels of complexity, resulting in big investments.
"The semiconductor industry has traditionally been dominated by silicon substrates. Although silicon is by far the most dominant substrate with more than 80% of the market [1], alternative non-silicon-based substrates like GaAs, GaN, SiC and InP are gaining momentum within the MtM industry.
(B) "All these semiconductor substrate materials, silicon-based devices but also in the III-V compound semiconductor industry, require an epitaxy process step which is one of the first stages in manufacturing electronic and optical components consisting of depositing a mono-crystalline film on a mono-crystalline substrate. * * *
• SiC is silicon carbide.
• Jamie Oberdick and Ashley WennersHerron, Integrating Dimensions to Get More out of Moore's Law and Advance Electronics. Materials Research Institute, Penn State University, Jan 10, 2024 https://www.psu.edu/news/materia ... res-law-and-advance
(" 'More Than Moore' refers to a concept in the tech world where we are not just making computer chips smaller and faster, but also with more functionalities,' said Muhtasim Ul Karim Sadaf, graduate research assistant in engineering science and mechanics and co-author of the study. 'It is about adding new and useful features to our electronic devices, like better sensors, improved battery management or other special functions, to make our gadgets smarter and more versatile' ")
(iv) In the Web, some advocates GaN as important new frontier in semiconductor (occasionally asserting that China is also pursuing this), while some others says thare are many challenges in technology to deploy GaN.
(v) 環球晶圓股份有限公司 (環球晶) GlobalWafers Co, Ltd (spin off in 201 from Sino-American Silicon Products, Inc 中美矽晶製品股份有限公司 (1981- ; based in Hsinchu); also based in Hsinchu; world's third largest silicon wafer supplier)
(vi)
(A) 苏州晶湛半导体有限公司 Enkris Semiconductor Inc http://www.enkris.com/
("晶湛半导体由业界公认的硅基氮化镓（GaN-on-Si）外延技术的开拓者程凯博士于2012年3月回国创办，坐落于苏州市工业园区，拥有国际先进的氮化镓外延材料研发和产业化基地")
(B)
• Ancient Greek-English dictionary:
* ἐγκρίς (noun feminine; romanization enkrís): a cake made with oil and honey, similar to the modern loukoumas or doughnut" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/% ... A%CF%81%CE%AF%CF%82
• Elani Temperance (female blogger), Ancient Hellenic Cakes. Baring the Aegis (a blog since 2012), Apr 26, 2015 https://baringtheaegis.blogspot. ... hellenic-cakes.html
("Enkris[:] This was a doughnut, fried in oil or lard and dipped in honey")
(C) Kai CHENG 程凯 https://www.semiconchina.org/zh/1417
("清华大学电子工程系本科硕士，比利时鲁汶大学和IMEC联合培养博士（2008年）。曾任IMEC GaN项目资深科学家，2012年回国创办晶湛半导体并任总裁，致力于氮化镓外延材料的产业化。 程博士是业界公认的硅上氮化镓外延技术的开拓者之一，分别于2006年、2011年和2021年首次研制出6英寸、8英寸、12英寸GaN-on-Si外延材料，拥有非常丰富的材料生长经验，能够在不同衬底上(Si/Sapphire/GaN等)实现高质量GaN外延。累计申请国内外专利近500项，已授权100余项。 GaN被认为是下一代电力电子与新型显示技术的核心材料，尤其在新能源汽车领域，转换器、OBC、数字座舱等都得到了市场的广泛关注。 晶湛半导体提供的高质量硅基GaN HEMT外延片，可涵盖40—1200V功率应用；并在全球首次将GaN-on-Si晶圆尺寸成功扩展至300mm")
(D) IMEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMEC
(1984- ; full name: Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre; based in Leuven, Belgium)
The eu in Leuven is pronounced the same as ur in English verb hurl. Leuven has population 87,000/ It is hard to believe that Dr Cheng could do so much within four years after receiving PhD. Besides, nowhere in the Web that says he is the inventor of such things.
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台北