Advanced BCD technology for automotive, audio and power applications

NXP's family of SOI-based advanced bipolar CMOS DMOS (A-BCD) technologies is presented. The technology is very successful in automotive, audio and power applications. This paper introduces the technology, the device concepts and the applications. The advantage of BCD technology on SOI is in the ability to have all devices fully dielectrically isolated. This enables various device-biasing conditions (like high side or below substrate voltage), which are not easy to realise on bulk. This creates competitive advantage in the mentioned applications. As an example this enables extreme robust EMC (electro magnetic compatibility) and EMI (electro magnetic immunity) circuitry for CAN (controlled area network), or LIN (local interconnect network) transceivers in automotive. The leakage currents of the devices are much lower compared to bulk. The same holds for parasitic capacitances towards the substrate. LIGBT's can be built without suffering from minority carriers being injected into the substrate. The area of power devices is in general very small due to the usage of the double Resurf principle and trench isolation. This small area pays off for high voltage analogue circuits. Special topics on self-heating and ESD are being treated, where it is demonstrated that performance is comparable to bulk. Three applications where SOI based BCD generates a functionality advantage, are being explained. The SOI based technology is an excellent starting point for development of future products were monolithic solutions can be built with embedded power or even embedded MEMs technology. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.