Tower ports silicon photonics to 300mm wafers

Analog foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Migdal, Haemek, Israel) has announced it has migrated its PH18 manufacturing process to 300mm-diameter wafers.

PH18 provides silicon and silicon-nitride waveguides, germanium PIN diodes and avalanche photodiodes, on-chip heaters in a CMOS-compatible 180nm process with an aluminum back-end.

It’s foundry PDK receives EDA support from Ansys, Cadence, Luceda, Siemens and Synopsys and chips are available through multi-project wafer runs and fast-turn runs.

The larger wafer size of Tower’s 300mm offering enhances compatibility with industry-standard OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) platforms.

“This process builds on Tower’s industry-leading 200mm SiPho platform both in terms of continuous process enhancements and increasing flexibility of supply for our customers,” said Edward Preisler, general manager of Tower’s RF business unit, in a statement.