New Japan Radio Co., Ltd. and United Microelectronics Corporation, a global semiconductor foundry, today announced that the two companies have successfully collaborated to achieve high-volume manufacturing for NJR’s MEMS microphone products. Adding UMC’s MEMS manufacturing capabilities to NJR’s Fukuoka and Kawagoe fabs will ensure NJR’s smooth and scaled production ramp to address this rapidly growing market. To date, NJR has already surpassed 100 million shipments for MEMS microphone ICs.
Mr. Takaaki Murata, NJR Director & Manager of its corporate office said, “NJR’s rapid growth in the MEMS microphone business cannot be achieved without UMC’s close support, technical expertise and manufacturing capability. Porting MEMS devices to foundry is extremely difficult since MEMS ICs contain mechanical modules, which cannot be electronically simulated as semiconductor devices. UMC’s superior process control expertise and manufacturing capability ensured a perfect performance match, equal to that of our own mother fab. With UMC’s strong support, we expect NJR’s MEMS shipments to continue its growth, enabling us to gain market share.”
The MEMS microphone market is experiencing high growth, as conventional ECM (electro condenser microphone) is being phased out in favor of MEMS for today’s most popular smartphones. To accommodate NJR’s current and future MEMS growth and help NJR maintain a market leadership position in the sector, UMC expanded its MEMS manufacturing capacity and resources, positioning the foundry as NJR’s joint process development center for future generations of high performance MEMS for microphones and other applications.
J H Shyu, senior vice president of Production and Operation Integration at UMC, commented, “NJR has been a wonderful UMC partner for many years. We have achieved several significant goals together, including the delivery of the world’s lowest noise OpAmp to market. It is a great pleasure to add another important area of corroboration in the form of MEMS devices. We look forward to continuing our partnership with NJR in both process technology and manufacturing to realize additional milestones in the future.”