FD-SOI

Soitec FD-SOI substrates enable ultra-low-power features, unique cost/performance tradeoff, high-reliability and high-performance-mixed signal integration for a wide range of applications.

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Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FD-SOI) enables transistors to operate in fully depleted mode, which presents many advantages compared to partially depleted mode (Partially-Depleted SOI, PD-SOI) or bulk technologies.

To achieve this, FD-SOI wafers need to be both very thin and extremely uniform for the top and BOx layers.
Soitec guarantees the final SOI layer’s uniformity to within just a few atomic layers.
The BOx functions like a real second gate and allows chip makers to easily tune the threshold voltage of the transistors.


The application level advantages of FD-SOI are:

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Ultra low power

FD-SOI is a low-power technology that allows operating voltages as low as 0.4V for applications in which energy consumption per operation is minimum.


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Digital performance

FD-SOI surpasses bulk technologies in terms of performance with more than 50% faster operation, 18% less power consumption, and the ability to achieve frequencies very close to FinFET devices.


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Tunable power/performance point

Due to its thin BOX, FD-SOI benefits from extensive back biasing capability to easily tune the power/performance tradeoff depending on the application.
This allows designing to create a single platform for multiple use cases.

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Mixed signal performance

FD-SOI allows unique analog performance thanks to its low variability characteristics, its body bias features, and its 2D device architecture, which present far less parasitic capacitances compared to 3D devices.


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Reliability

Studies show that FD-SOI provides better reliability than standard bulk process technologies with a 100x to 1000x improvement in soft error rates (SER).
This is especially significant to automotive and aerospace applications.

50 %
faster chips compared to bulk
+/-1Å
SOI layer uniformity
2 x
higher cut off frequency improvement compared to FinFET
100x
improvement in soft error rate
0.4 V
operating voltage
50 %
lower mask cost than FinFET
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FD-SOI technology provides the best balance between digital performance, mixed-signal compatibility, power consumption and cost.

Soitec produces FD-SOI wafers for following technology nodes: 65, 28, 22, 12nm.

Soitec FD-SOI wafers characteristics are:

  • Similar low-threshold defectivity levels compared to bulk substrates
  • 12nm to 15nm top silicon layer produced using Soitec’s Smart Cut technology
  • 15 to 25nm BOX layer
  • Atomistic uniformity control across the full length spectrum with dedicated metrology (from micro roughness to the wafer level)
  • Available in 300mm wafer