Silicon On Sapphire - Circuits and Systems

Circuits and Systems

The advantages of the SOS technology allow research groups to fabricate a variety of SOS circuits and systems that benefit from the technology and advance the state-of-the-art in:

• analog-to-digital converters (a nano-Watts prototype was produced by Yale e-Lab)
• monolithic digital isolation buffers
• SOS-CMOS image sensor arrays (one of the first standard CMOS image sensor arrays capable of transducing light simultaneously from both sides of the die was produced by Yale e-Lab)
• patch-clamp amplifiers
• energy harvesting devices
• three-dimensional (3D) integration with no galvanic connections
• charge pumps
• temperature sensors

Silicon on sapphire pressure and temperature sensors have been manufactured by Sensotron and Sensonetics utilizing a patented process by Armen Sahagen.

Peregrine Semiconductor's patented UltraCMOS SOS technology has been used in the development of RF integrated circuits (RFICs) including RF switches, digital step attenuators (DSAs), phase locked-loop frequency synthesizers, prescalers, mixers/upconverters, and VGAs. More recently, it introduced digitally tunable capacitors for RF impedance tuning. These RFICs are designed for commercial RF applications including mobile handsets and cellular infrastructure, broadband consumer and DTV, test and measurement, and industrial public safety, as well as rad-hard aerospace and defense markets.

A book on the subject is: "Silicon-on-Sapphire Circuits and Systems, Sensor and Biosensor interfaces" by Eugenio Culurciello published by McGraw Hill in 2009.