Wednesday, May 22, 2013

ON Semi to Manufacture Image Sensor at Gresham, Oregon Fab

Business Wire: ON Semiconductor is collaborating with SRI International and Ball Aerospace to secure funding for the Defense Production Act Title III, Advanced CMOS Focal Plane Arrays (FPA) for Visible Sensors for Star Trackers (VSST) Project. The goal of the project is to increase the availability of domestically produced visible imagers, manufactured using advanced CMOS technology, that are designed to enable flexible visible imaging systems for use on-board satellite systems for Department of Defense and other U.S. Government needs.

To meet the goals of the Staring Technology for Enhanced Linear Line-of-sight Angular Recognition (STELLAR) program, the companies will work together to develop an advanced 2D visible image sensor. ON Semiconductor brings its on-shore and highly modular 180nm CMOS process technology along with its extensive experience designing high performance CMOS image sensors. SRI International brings extensive experience in designing focal plane arrays for space applications, along with a highly advanced BSI processing capability based on its ultra-thin silicon on insulator (UTSOI) technology.

The ONC18 CMOS process manufactured at ON Semiconductor’s on-shore 8-inch fab in Gresham, Oregon, is an ideal platform for developing low power and highly integrated digital and mixed-signal application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) devices. The STELLAR program will further expand the ONC18 process to include pinned photodiode and transfer gate devices. Combined with ON Semiconductor’s long term commitment to maintain and support process technologies, this capability enabling development of advanced CMOS image sensors will extend supply availability.

"The addition of an image sensor module to our ONC18 platform reinforces our commitment to the space-level DoD business and the overall image sensor market," stated Vince Hopkin, VP at Mil/Aero, Digital, Foundry, IPD and Image Sensor products division at ON Semiconductor. "The ONC18 image sensor process capability will enable a second source capability for the markets we serve including machine-vision, high-speed and biometrics."

Gresham Fab

2 comments:

  1. Do they plan to include BSI in their "ONC18 CMOS" process?

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  2. Probably not, ONSemi adresses space and machine vision applications, which are high-end applications that require large pixels and large sensors. BSI tech is not appropriate for such applications.

    ReplyDelete

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