Schottky and Fast Recovery Diodes Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The leading assignee alone accounts for 24 of 465 records, and the top 5 combined hold 19.1% of all records in scope.
- Filing activity has peaked and stalled. Annual filings rose from 7 in 2017 to a peak of 26 in 2021, then flattened toward the 2022 midpoint of 17.
- Almost all activity sits in one IPC family. H01L covers 95.1% of the 465 records, with H10D layered on top of over a third of them — narrow but crowded ground.
What this landscape covers
This review maps 465 published patent records filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, drawn from filings that combine Schottky barrier diode, fast recovery diode and power diode terminology with claim-level language on reverse recovery charge, forward voltage drop, high-temperature leakage and softness factor. The IPC scope is anchored on H01L29, H01L21 and H02M1, which together capture semiconductor device structure, fabrication process and power conversion circuitry.
Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend chart understate real filing activity; treat the tail of the curve as a floor, not a ceiling.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 465-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and how those records distribute across IPC subclasses.
A flattening filing curve
Filings climbed from 7 in 2017 to a peak of 26 in 2021, then eased back toward 17 at the 2022 midpoint. The curve reads as flat-to-declining rather than growing, though the final year or two is necessarily undercounted because of publication lag.
Concentration in H01L and H10D
H01L, the broad semiconductor devices class, appears on 95.1% of the 465 records in scope. H10D, a general semiconductor devices subclass, sits underneath more than a third of records (35.3%), while H10P, power conversion (H02M, 4.1%) and pulse/logic circuitry (H03K, 2.8%) trail well behind — a reminder that most inventive activity here is being claimed as device structure rather than as circuit-level application.
Shares are the percentage of the 465 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Schottky and Fast Recovery Diodes with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about schottky and fast recovery diodes and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this space
Low forward voltage drop Schottky barrier diode and manufacturing method therefor (US6921957B2)
A new low forward voltage drop Schottky barrier diode and its manufacturing method are provided. The method includes steps of providing a substrate, forming plural trenches on the substrate, and forming a metal layer on the substrate having plural trenches thereon to form a barrier metal layer between the substrate and the surface metal layer for forming the Schottky barrier diode.Filed by Onizuka Electronics, granted 2005-07-26 — a trench-based barrier metal approach aimed squarely at reducing forward voltage drop.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5111253A | Multicellular FET having a Schottky diode merged therewith | 295 |
| 2 | US4134123A | High voltage Schottky barrier diode | 109 |
| 3 | US7851881B1 | Schottky barrier diode (SBD) and its off-shoot merged PN/Schottky diode or junction barrier Schottky (JBS) di… | 91 |
| 4 | US20040164347A1 | Design and fabrication of rugged FRED | 67 |
| 5 | US20130313570A1 | Monolithically integrated sic mosfet and schottky barrier diode | 60 |
| 6 | US7211824B2 | Organic semiconductor diode | 59 |
| 7 | JP2007305836A | Power conversion circuit | 57 |
| 8 | US20060022292A1 | Schottky diode structure to reduce capacitance and switching losses and method of making same | 50 |
| 9 | US20030127687A1 | Semiconductor device | 45 |
| 10 | US6177712B1 | Schottky barrier diode having a guard ring structure | 45 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations — read this as a signal of influence on later work, not as a measure of present-day importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about this field
Reading the concentration, class distribution and citation data together points to a field where structural claim space is dense but circuit-level application claims are comparatively open.
Leadership is real but not dominant
The leading assignee holds 24 records and the top 5 combined hold 19.1% of the 465 records in scope — a meaningful lead, but well short of the kind of near-monopoly seen in more mature discrete-device fields. The top 10 combined reach 31.8%, leaving over two-thirds of records spread across a long tail.
Activity has plateaued since 2021
Filings rose steadily from 7 in 2017 to a peak of 26 in 2021, then eased to 17 by the 2022 midpoint. That pattern suggests the core structural claim space around Schottky and fast recovery diode design has already been substantially staked out.
Structure dominates over circuit application
H01L records make up 95.1% of the 465-record set, and H10D layers under 35.3% of them. Power conversion circuitry (H02M) touches only 4.1% and pulse/logic technique (H03K) only 2.8%, indicating that most claims are written at the device-structure level rather than at the system or application level.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to schottky and fast recovery diodes, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Fuji Electric Co., Ltd. | Fuji Electric Research & Development, Ltd. | 2 |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | STIDHAM MARK E | 2 |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | RASSEL ROBERT M | 2 |
| Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation | SHENOY PRAVEEN MURALEEDHARAN | 2 |
| International Rectifier Corporation | CHIOLA DAVIDE | 2 |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | NOJIRI YUJI | 1 |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | KATO MASANORI | 1 |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | IMANAKA AKIRA | 1 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across 465 records, and the strongest pairs link corporate affiliates or named inventors to their employer rather than independent companies working jointly — cross-company collaboration is not a visible feature of this field.
Who holds the ranked positions
The assignee ranking covers 100 companies, counted in records — the full list the dataset returns, not a curated top-50 or top-100 cut. Recent-year momentum across several named leaders reads as zero for the latest year, consistent with the publication lag rather than a sudden stop in R&D.
A clear but not overwhelming leader
The top-ranked assignee holds 24 of the 465 records in scope, roughly double the fifth-place count of 13. That gap narrows quickly further down the ranking, with tenth place at 11 records.
US and Japan lead receiving offices
United States filings lead the receiving-office count at 184, ahead of Japan at 73 and China at 70. Europe (EPO) and WIPO PCT filings sit further back at 36 and 33 respectively, with South Korea at 19 — a filing footprint concentrated in the three largest device markets.
Named leaders show no latest-year filings
Several long-established assignees register zero filings in the most recent year of the dataset. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this understates real activity for firms that filed recently but have not yet been published, rather than indicating withdrawal from the field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Fuji Electric Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | — |
| Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation | 0 | — |
| International Rectifier Corporation | 0 | — |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Shindengen Electric Manufacturing Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| ABB Technology Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking or identifying open claim space.
Map claims against the top 10 assignees
With the top 10 holding 31.8% of the 465 records, a claim-by-claim review of that group's structural patents is the fastest way to identify where a new filing would sit close to existing prior art.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaTrack the circuit-level application gap
H02M and H03K together cover a small share of records relative to H01L, suggesting power-conversion and pulse-circuit applications of Schottky and fast recovery diode structures remain comparatively open.
Run a white-space search in EurekaWatch for delayed 2025-2026 publications
Given the publication lag, filings from named leaders showing zero latest-year activity are likely to surface over the next 12-18 months. Set up monitoring now rather than waiting for the count to visibly rise.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
The dataset ranks 100 assignees by record count, with the top-ranked company holding 24 of 465 records in scope and the top 5 combined accounting for 19.1% of all records. That is a meaningful lead but not a monopoly, since the top 10 combined reach only 31.8%, leaving well over two-thirds of records spread across a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants. This pattern is more typical of an established discrete-device field with many incremental contributors than one dominated by a single player.
Filing activity rose from 7 records in 2017 to a peak of 26 in 2021, then eased to 17 by the 2022 midpoint, and the trend since reads as flat to declining. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one or two years in the dataset understate actual filing volume, so the true 2024-2026 picture will likely fill in somewhat once those applications publish. Even allowing for that lag, the shape of the curve points to a plateau rather than continued growth.
US6921957B2 claims a low forward voltage drop Schottky barrier diode built with a trench-based barrier metal layer between the substrate and surface metal, granted to Onizuka Electronics in 2005. It is a structural fabrication claim rather than a circuit-application claim, so it primarily constrains trench-and-barrier-metal approaches to reducing forward voltage drop rather than every Schottky diode design. Anyone filing a similar trench-metal structure for the same forward-voltage-drop objective should review this claim closely; approaches based on different mechanisms, such as junction barrier or merged PN/Schottky structures, sit outside its direct scope.
The IPC composition shows 95.1% of the 465 records touching H01L (semiconductor device structure) but only 4.1% touching H02M (power conversion circuitry) and 2.8% touching H03K (pulse technique and logic circuits). That gap suggests structural device claims — trench geometry, barrier metal composition, junction termination — are comparatively saturated, while circuit-level integration of these diodes into power conversion or pulse systems has fewer entrenched claims. Reverse recovery softness optimisation and SiC-based high-temperature leakage control also show up as narrower, less-crowded technical threads within the broader structural cluster.
Rarely. The dataset records only 10 co-assignee pairs across 465 total records, and the strongest of those pairs link a company to its own research subsidiary or a named inventor to their employer, not two independent companies collaborating. This tells you that most patent strategy in Schottky and fast recovery diode design is pursued in-house rather than through joint filings, so competitive tracking should focus on individual assignees rather than looking for alliance or joint-venture signals.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.