SOI fab news: 130nm 300mm RFSOI and 180nm SOI foundry capacity available

Date: 07/07/2015
RF Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology focused chip company Peregrine Semiconductor announced industry’s first RF SOI technology built on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 130 nm 300 mm RF technology platform. This process technology platform called UltraCMOS 11 uses a custom fabrication flow from GLOBALFOUNDRIES' Fab 7 facility in Singapore.

300mm helps in achieving manufacturing scale of RF SOI chips in applications including mobile devices and high-volume RF communication applications. Peregrine's 40 GHz switch which is an RF silicon-on-insulator (SOI) performs as good as gallium arsenide (GaAs) switches in applications such as test-and-measurement, microwave backhaul, radar and military communications applications.

In another SOI semiconductor fab related news, X-FAB Silicon foundries announced 180nm SOI technology for automotive and industrial applications. X-FAB says its XT018 180-nanometer SOI platform outperforms bulk CMOS technologies and provides cost savings of up to 30-percent. XT018 process is suggested for advanced automotive applications such as monolithic motor controllers and physical layer transceivers including integrated or stand-alone LIN/CAN transceivers.

The XT018 platform targeted at automotive, industrial and medical applications with up to 200V operating voltage and an operating temperature up to 175°C.

"The X-FAB XT018 180nm modular high-voltage SOI CMOS technology combines the benefits of SOI wafers with Deep Trench Isolation (DTI) plus those of a state-of-the-art six-metal-layer 180nm bulk CMOS process. Using SOI wafers as the starting material, in combination with trench isolation instead of the more commonly used junction isolation techniques in CMOS, simplifies the design concept. The SOI wafers eliminate the parasitic bipolar effects to substrate, reducing latch-up risk. They also enable the development of devices such as truly isolated diodes, allowing reverse supply voltage protection that is difficult to achieve with bulk CMOS or BCD technologies. " explains X-FAB in its release.

The new process helps in fabricating a low on resistance 40V NMOS transistor with on resistance of 26 milli-ohm-mm˛, 40V and 60V ESD enhanced devices and matching PMOS and depletion transistors.

The enhanced XT018 foundry platform is available immediately including full PDK support.

Author: Srinivasa Reddy N
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