Sofics, a Belgium-based provider of on-chip design products for electrostatic discharge and electrical overstress (ESD/EOS) protection, says its PowerQubic EOS technology has been chosen by eSilicon Corp., a semiconductor value chain producer, for a high-voltage solar power application.
PowerQubic technology will protect the 15 V interfaces on a new integrated circuit (IC) that eSilicon is creating for a customer that will use it in solar panel power converters. The converters transform DC voltage from the solar panels into standard AC voltage for residential and commercial use.
‘We needed to protect a 15 V interface on a 0.18 um high-voltage [laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor] chip that we will produce for our customer,’ says Hugh Durdan, chief operating officer at eSilicon. ‘The IC contains both the 15 V interface and digital logic circuits.’
