Advances in Power and High Voltage Integrated Circuits

During the past two decades, together with the rapid growth in semiconductor devices and technologies for VLSI and ULSI, a significant but more gradual growth has taken place in Power Integrated Circuits (PIC) and Smart Power. While new technologies have been developed to address different segments of the Smart Power market ranging from high (500 V) to medium (100-400 V) and low (≪100 V) voltage applications, the need for innovative circuit techniques and flexibility has grown. Typical Power IC´s require both analog and digital operations. Furthermore, large voltage swings involving fast slew rates can cause unwanted dominance of parasitics. Interconnecting high and low voltage components call for special techniques for voltages above 300 volts. Also high temperature operation and noise immunity are additional requirements. New circuit as well as device techniques have been developed and continue to be developed to address these requirements. As the number of functions of PIC´s has increased, the overall complexity and size of the chips has consequently grown. To address this need, computer aided design methodologies have been developed that allow automated design and layout of Power IC´s from systems level specifications.