Soitec has entered into an agreement to supply silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates to CSMC Technologies Corporation, a China-based foundry.
The SOI substrates are intended for high voltage and CMOS chip designs for colour plasma display panel drivers and other applications.
According to Soitec, there is significant and growing interest in China for SOI projects.
"Over the last two years, we have experienced a strong acceleration of interest in SOI substrates in China mainly by the majority of the largest local foundries and institutes,” said Paul Boudre, chief operating officer at Soitec.
“Today these development projects are moving to first production ramp up and we expect a significant growth of SOI based products in China in the coming years," said Boudre.
Designers are choosing SOI wafer technology 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,” said Soitec.
CSMC manufactures ICs and power discrete processes at production technology nodes ranging from 0.13µm to 0.5µm.
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