With the prolonged US-China trade war causing Taiwan's position in the tech supply chain to become more and more prevalent, many hidden titans of the nation are starting to surface. Besides being home to the internationally renowned Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Taiwan is also the world leader in the field of power supplies, among which ranks Delta Electronics, the company with the world's largest market share in power supplies and whose products are used in fields including automotive, industrial, networking, servers, and personal computers. Not one to rest on its laurels, Delta Electronics is still constantly striving to strengthen its lead. In addition to investing considerable funds into R&D, the company also announced the establishment of an Academia-Industry Research Center (AIR Center) with the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (hereafter referred to as Taiwan Tech) in 2020, committing to the investment of at least NT$30 million over the next three years. Research in the initial stages will focus on topics such as green server rooms and energy storage, with the overall focus targeting the three major areas of 5G, cloud, and artificial intelligence.

To meet global market development trends in 2021, Taiwan Tech's Center for Power Electronic Technologies started conducting prospective and practical research in five fields: green energy, lighting technology and its applications, power conversion, electric motor control, and IC design for power electronics. Currently, the center is actively pursuing third-generation semiconductors as a cutting-edge technology needed by Taiwan's power industry in the future.

Huang-Jen Chiu, dean of the Office of Research and Development at Taiwan Tech who served extensively as the director of the Center for Power Electronic Technologies, explains that the first-generation semiconductors used silicon (Si) as base material, second-generation semiconductors used gallium arsenide (GaAs), and the latest third-generation semiconductors use gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC). However, the difference in material does not imply that first-generation semiconductors are technically inferior. In fact, silicon remains the primary material used in modern semiconductor chips. It is simply that the properties of different materials vary greatly and this difference affects the way that they are applied in different fields. For example, the materials used in the third-generation semiconductor technology have excellent power conversion efficiency in high-frequency, high-voltage, and high-temperature environments. These properties make them ideal for achieving power savings and improving energy conversion efficiency and thus make them highly suitable for applications in the field of power supply.

In recent years, third-generation semiconductors have been the focus of research the world over. China's semiconductor industry, for example, is significantly behind Taiwan due to limitations in technology, talent, equipment, and various other restrictions, but due to the full support of the government, it has still made progress in certain applications of third-generation semiconductor technology and caught up with Taiwan, signaling an alarming trend for the Taiwanese industry to improve on.

Accelerating domestic power component manufacturing to strengthen industry self-sustainability

While Taiwan has outstanding achievements in the global power supply industry, it is still reliant on foreign suppliers for certain core power supply components, posing a hidden threat to the long-term development of the industry. Many years ago, Taiwan Tech had foreseen the necessity to increase the overall technical capability of the Taiwan power industry by forming the Advanced Power Technology Industry-Academic Alliance, a joint effort between Taiwan Tech's various laboratories and players in the industry to strengthen the link between R&D and commercialization.

Chiu explains that the research and development of semiconductor technology is fundamentally a gradual process. Seeking to produce components that can surpass offers from the leading brand in a short amount of time is both difficult and impractical. Thanks to the efforts of the Research Center and the Alliance, however, some domestic companies are set to release power components with equal functionality to that of leading mainstream brands in 2021, marking a historic milestone for the development of Taiwan's power supply industry.

Besides achievements in the power supply industry, the Taiwan Tech research team has also made various contributions in the field of energy storage. For one, the team's collaboration with the power electronics industry played a pivotal role in helping domestic companies acquire key business opportunities in the electric vehicle market. At the same time, the team has also developed a high-frequency wireless charging solution that is ready to be commercialized to meet the rapid surging demands of the automated guided vehicles (AGV) market. The technology can also be used in electric vehicles and may go on to be a powerful bargaining chip for domestic companies after the wireless charging market.

Chiu says that since the center's founding, the team has accumulated a wealth of patents and delivered outstanding results in industry-academic collaboration. By working with the Ministry of Science and Technology's Global Research & Industry Alliance (GLORIA), the team hopes to be connected to more industry resources from enterprises both domestic and abroad, while at the same time facilitate technology transfer to more Taiwanese brands to strengthen the nation's competitiveness on the global stage.