Asia Pacific Microsystems, UMC seal MEMS deal

Asia Pacific Microsystems Inc. (APM) has reached an alliance agreement with semiconductor foundry UMC for 8-inch MEMS wafer fab capacity. As part of this agreement, UMC and APM will collaborate to support current and future customers for the 8-inch MEMS process. UMC will provide the fab manufacturing, logistic management and any required capacity expansion. APM will bring its MEMS process technologies.

The joint APM-UMC MEMS team has been working together during the last 18 months for this development. An 8-inch MEMS prototype line has been set up in one of UMC's fabs and will soon begin process qualification on one product.

W Y Chen, senior VP of UMC, says: "We are pleased to partner with APM for this MEMS alliance. Through this cooperative effort, UMC will be able to offer customers a one-stop solution for CMOS-MEMS integration to accelerate their time to market."

Ming-Ru Chen, president of APM, notes: "With this alliance, APM is poised to serve our customers with a roadmap to benefit the cost curve from the 8-inch wafer process. 8-inch wafer also offers easy integration to sub-0.35?m CMOS process, which is not available on 6-inch CMOS processes"