Shanghai, China and Paris, France: Supplier of engineered substrates for the microelectronics industry, The Soitec Group has announced the company has entered into an agreement to supply silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates to CSMC Technologies Corporation (CSMC), a specialty analog foundry based in China.
Soitec is sampling SOI substrates for High Voltage (HV) and CMOS applications initially aimed at color plasma display panel (PDP) driver ICs and other mixed signal and analog applications.
SOI is a cost-optimized technology increasing device performance and reliability, while lowering power consumption.
"With this agreement, CSMC will use Soitec's wafers on several major SOI projects for High Voltage and CMOS technology. We believe the partnership with Soitec will help us to provide a more cost-effective solution to our customers," said Filian Wu, VP of Analog Process Technology Development Center.
CSMC is a leading pure-play specialty analog foundry in China providing fabless design houses and integrated device manufacturers with a range of manufacturing services. The company manufactures ICs and power discrete processes at production technology nodes ranging from 0.13 micron to 0.5 micron. CSMC ICs and power devices are utilized in a broad range of end market applications including consumer electronics, communications devices, personal computers and more.
Designers of chips for leading analog and mixed signal applications are increasingly choosing SOI in large part because it dielectrically isolates all the transistor devices from each other, thereby eliminating the danger of chip-killing "latch-up". It also minimizes current leakage, thereby saving energy at high operating temperatures. And, it enables very compact design, taking 40% less space than traditional pn-isolation technologies. For digital CMOS applications, SOI increases performance by up to 30% and decreases power consumption by up to 50%.