May 2, 2012 -- austriamicrosystems AG' Full Service Foundry business unit today announced an extension of its 0.35-µm high-voltage CMOS fabrication service, offering electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection up to 8kV at 50V and up to 4kV at 120V operating voltage in ICs fabricated on its specialist H35 process.

The new silicon-proven ESD protection cells guarantee 1-kV, 2-kV, 4-kV and 8-kV HBM (human body model) ESD protection compliant with the MIL-883H, Method 3015.8, JEDEC JESD22-A114F ESD and AEC-Q100 standards, as well as protection up to 500V according to the CDM (charged device model).

austriamicrosystems is among the first foundries to offer proper ESD protection up to 8kV at 50V and 4kV at 120V on a CMOS-based high-voltage process. The move is an extension of the company's ”More Than Silicon" initiative, under which its foundry service provides a package of intellectual property, cell libraries, consultancy and testing services, in addition to wafer fabrication, to help successfully implement advanced analog and mixed-signal circuit designs.

The newly developed periphery library with built-in ESD protection structures offers latch up-free 8-kV HBM ESD protection for maximum supply voltages of 20V and 50V and 4-kV HBM at 120V. Furthermore, it offers a built in latch-up robustness of ±100mA at 150°C according to JEDEC JESD78D, Nov. 2011. The new ESD protection cells have already been successfully used in various automotive products that easily passed the very tough so-called "Zwickau" test (6-kV level according to IEC 61000-4-2 contacted; 330Ohm/150pF).

austriamicrosystems' 0.35-µm high-voltage CMOS technology is the first purely CMOS-based high-voltage process that matches BCD performance and chip sizes at much lower process complexity. It allows the integration of 3.3V, 5V, 20V, 50V and 120V devices on a single chip, floating logic libraries as well as a best-in-class power-on resistance. Rigorous modularity permits 100% re-use of low-voltage CMOS IP. Consequently, austriamicrosystems' 0.35-µm high-voltage CMOS technology is a compelling solution for fabless design houses and IDMs creating power management products, display drivers, sensor interfaces, capacitive actuators, printer and MEMS driver ICs for industrial, medical, communications or automotive markets, supporting advanced applications even in the harshest environments.