SK Keyfoundry Develops On-Chip EMC Protection Technology to Boost Automotive Semiconductor Reliability

SK Keyfoundry, a South Korean 8-inch pure-play semiconductor foundry, has developed and entered mass production of a new on-chip electromagnetic compatibility protection technology for automotive semiconductors. Built around a Bi-directional Silicon Controlled Rectifier structure and applied to its 0.13-micron BCD process, this innovation addresses one of the most pressing reliability challenges in modern automotive electronics protecting chips from continuous and severe electrical stress during real-world vehicle operation, not just during manufacturing or assembly.

To understand why this matters, consider how dramatically the electronics content in vehicles has grown. Today's cars are packed with power management chips, motor drivers, and control ICs that must operate flawlessly under fluctuating voltages, electrical noise, and transient surges generated by the vehicle's own systems. Conventional ESD protection was designed to handle brief electrostatic discharge events during chip handling  not the sustained electromagnetic stress that occurs when a semiconductor is actively running inside a vehicle. Automotive standards like ISO 10605 set strict requirements for this kind of system-level protection,  and meeting them has traditionally required external protection components such as TVS diodes mounted on the circuit boa...