November 6, 2006 – Israeli pure-play foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. has made available a new laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor process (LDMOS) on its 0.18-micron platform, produced in its Fab 2 facility, targeting use in LCD drivers for cell phones and other handheld displays. The high-voltage technology is also available on Tower’s shuttle program, for fast and inexpensive design verification and engineering samples.

“The addition of this high-voltage technology offering enables us to provide additional solutions to consumer markets of high demand,” stated Yossi Netzer, GM of mixed signal and RF-CMOS product line at Tower Semiconductor, adding that the process was tuned specifically to meet the unique specifications of portable displays.

Devicemakers are currently integrating high-density logic and mixed-signal circuits with high-voltage drivers on a single chip, with current operating ranges of 12V gate and up to 25V source/drain, and work being done to extend to 40V source/drain and lower power-on resistance while reducing mask count, noted Tower. Today’s devices also utilize a highly effective trench isolation scheme, and exhibit low noise and high immunity to latch-up.