Infineon & EBV – 25 years of collaboration

During their joint interview, they gave us details about the long-standing strategic partnership between the two companies, which started all the way back in 1997.

What would you say has been pivotal to the continued success of cooperative efforts between EBV and Infineon?

Thomas Staudinger (TS): EBV and Infineon have numerous cultural compatibilities. Both companies are very much innovation driven. We are always looking to find new ways to approach engineering and logistical challenges – overcoming obstacles and coming up with new ideas. As European companies, we share a European perspective while still maintaining a ‘global perspective’.

Susanne Horn (SH): The quality of EBV’s field applications engineers (FAEs) really makes a difference to Infineon. Through their constant contact with end customers’ design teams, they are providing valuable feedback to us about applications including emerging application and technology trends. This means that, as well as being an important demand creation partner, EBV knows customer pain points and requirements. This supports us to define our future product roadmaps.

Wide bandgap technology is a primary focus for both Infineon and EBV. How are you working together to accelerate uptake here?

TS: Despite their many attractive attributes, SiC devices can prove difficult for the uninitiated to work with. Also, engineers really need to understand the specific benefits that Infineon’s SiC products have over the competition – so that they can select the most optimised devices and derive the best end results. Through joint hosting of informative training sessions, we are rapidly closing the knowledge gap. This is giving more engineers confidence in SiC and encouraging them to consider switching from Si power devices.

SH: Infineon is fully committed to making its distribution support as effective as possible, with roughly half of the company’s revenue coming through the channel. We as Infineon see the Wide bandgap technology as a future technology for many applications. Infineon and Avnet, including EBV, started a global campaign to promote CoolSIC to our customer base. The great technical community of EBV and Avnet and the good customer contacts contribute to our common success. Further technical trainings enable design ins. Joint promotion activities will help us to establish Infineon as key supplier for CoolSiC.

TS: The challenge for the electronics industry with regard to SiC is currently shifting, as the cost issues that were previously problematic have been reduced. Rather than getting engineers interested in SiC, it is now much more about having enough capacity available.

What are the goals that Infineon is setting for SiC technology?

SH: Helping with the widespread decarbonisation and digitalisation of our society will be fundamental to Infineon’s strategy over the coming years – and our CoolSiC products will be at the forefront of this. Through the use of this kind of innovating products, Infineon will help our customers to design products with higher efficiency and less power losses.

We can save energy on industrial drives, and on electrical vehicles (EVs).

As you just mentioned, Susanne, the most prominent wide bandgap market is clearly EVs. How are Infineon and EBV contributing to progression here?

TS: Together we are supporting all facets of the EV business. In the vehicles themselves, CoolSiC devices are making powertrains more efficient, so that greater range can be travelled between recharges. It is not just cars where electrification is being witnessed though. We are now engaged in numerous e-bike and e-scooter projects, too.

SH: In addition to the actual vehicles, there is roll-out of the charging stations. Focus for Infineon is the fast EV charging. CoolSiC will help our customer to reduce the charging time. With our CoolSiC products we are able to increase the power level and at the same time reduce the losses. Many start-up companies have appreciated the support of EBV in the past years and we will continue this jointly going forward. With our common campaigns with Avnet, we will further address these customers with our application solutions.  

In what other ways, outside of the ones already discussed, are Infineon and EBV helping to improve people’s lives and make the world more sustainable?

SH: Across a wide array of different application areas, semiconductor requirements are increasing. Alongside the before-mentioned EVs and infrastructure for generation of renewable energy, we engage in building automation. Here, our technology is enabling better management of energy usage, so that operations are more sustainable and carbon emissions are reduced. In smart farming, EBV and Infineon are working together to bring in connectivity and sensor technology needed for boosting crop yields. In relation to healthcare, by being able to monitor the condition of patients remotely, the strain on medical professionals will be decreased.There is potential for the technology provided by Infineon to be used in so many areas. This is why having a distribution partner like EBV, with its strong reputation and highly professional team, is so important.

TS: Thanks to the acquisitions that Infineon has made, such as Cypress, EBV can now offer more comprehensive solutions based on its product range – with not just the power aspect being covered, but also the IoT connectivity, security, data processing, etc. This allows us to address a much bigger proportion of each customer’s system design, plus it broadens the scope of places where we can place Infineon Technologies.