Boosting the European Value Chain for Sustainable Power Electronics

FastLane targets a full, highly competitive and sustainable European value chain for Silicon Carbide (SiC) based power electronics. The goal is to provide a competitive technology excellence from engineered SiC substrates to novel devices, smart power modules and converters to broadened automotive and industrial applications. The next generation of SiC materials will be developed by improved quality of the crystalline starting material, material re-use and acceleration of substrate EU-based manufacturing. Based on the new materials the next generation SiC MOSFET power devices will be developed overcoming current limitations regarding efficiency, performance, robustness and sustainability and will integrate also new on-chip sensing technology. Power modules based on the devices will be further improved by several innovations, e.g. advanced sintering which will lead to improved power module reliability and therefore better sustainability. On component level, highly efficient and reliable inverters for automotive and industrial applications will be developed, including a variety of innovations in detail. In all steps, an improvement of SiC material characterization methodologies will increase the quality and the output of EU based semiconductors. Overall, performance and reliability are expected to increase greatly in all steps. These developments will lead to an overall reduction of cost and, by reduction of the footprint (lifetime increase, CO2 decrease, water consumption decrease), to a greener economy.With the envisioned goals, FastLane will decrease the environmental footprint all along the product lifecycle and contribute to the European Green Deal and ensure a sustainable European sovereignty in power electronics. Cost benefits for the end user will be achieved by the reuse of the automotive economy of scale. With these steps, FastLane contributes to the European societal goals and a greener economy.