Smart power technologies on SOI

This paper gives a summary on SOI based Smart Power technologies. The benefit of SOI is explained by reviewing the basic power device concepts. SOI enables full dielectric isolation of devices. In power applications this can be used to build products with improved EMC, improved robustness. Another dominant aspect is that devices can be biased above the supply voltage or below the ground voltage, without suffering from electrical overstress or the trigger of parasitic transistors. It also enables the integration of minority carrier devices into an integrated circuit. NXP uses those benefits in the SOI based technologies, like A-BCD (for medium voltages) and EZ HV (for high voltages). Other semiconductor manufacturers use the SOI for similar reasons, or extend the voltage range of their baseline technology. Main drawback of SOI is the relative high price of the starting material.