Key Foundry, a pure-play foundry in Korea, announced that it now offers ABOV Semiconductor (ABOV) its Gen2 flash memory embedded 0.13 micron BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) process suitable for automotive power semiconductor.
Power semiconductor is a semiconductor device that converts, distributes and controls the supply of power from a power source for various kinds of applications such as TV, lights, laptop computers and smartphones. As products emerging with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), the IoT (Internet of Things) and autonomous vehicles need multiple power parts, the demand for power semiconductors is increasing significantly. In order to manufacture power semiconductors suitable for the Fourth Industrial Revolution products, BCD process that enables the implementation of an analog-controlling Bipolar block, a digital-controlling CMOS block and a high power-managing DMOS block in a single chip, is necessary.
Key Foundry has developed its own BCD processes and manufactured various power semiconductors from 40 V or under low voltage products to 200 V high voltage products. Key Foundry’s BCD processes have the best-in-class process characteristics of high BV, lower Ron with small switching loss primarily due to Key Foundry’s continuous commitment to R&D. In addition, Key Foundry’s self-developed DTI (Deep Trench Isolation) process, which reduces interferences occurring in high voltage products and thereby improves the product’s overall performance, has received a positive response from the market. The Gen2 flash memory embedded 0.13 micron BCD process offers highly integrated 1.5 V logic, 8 ~ 40 V LDMOS for power and 64K byte embedded flash memory. In particular, all devices are Grade-1 certified under the AEC-Q100, the international reliability specifications for automotive electronic parts.
ABOV developed a UFC (Universal Fast Charger) MCU using Key Foundry’s Gen2 flash memory embedded 0.13 micron BCD process. This UFC MCU has power LDMOS and highly integrated embedded flash memory, and it supports USB PD (Power Delivery) 3.0 and legacy high-speed charging. With this successful launch of the first automotive product adopting Key Foundry’s Gen2 flash memory embedded 0.13 micron BCD, Key Foundry expects this process can be broadly adopted to various automotive power semiconductors for motor driving, BMS (Battery Management System), wireless charging and DC-DC.
“It means a lot to us to launch a product for automotive using Key Foundry’s 0.13 micron BCD. Along with our home appliance MCUs, which is one of ABOV’s major product groups, we are performing a full-scale promotion on automotive MCUs this year. We expect our shares will grow in the mid-to-long term in the automotive MCU market, which foreign companies have traditionally dominated, and will speed up the development of general purpose automotive MCUs through our continued partnership with Key Foundry,” said Won Choi, CEO of ABOV.
“We are pleased to offer ABOV our Gen2 flash memory embedded 0.13 micron BCD suitable for automotive power semiconductor amid the rapidly growing automotive semiconductor market,” said Dr. Tae Jong Lee, CEO of Key Foundry. “Key Foundry will continue to provide foundry services to support diverse product designs and our plan is to continuously increase the portion of automotive semiconductors in our product portfolio.”
