UMC partners with STMicro on 65nm BSI CMOS image sensor technology

The partnership follows upon the two companies' success to manufacture ST's front-side illumination (FSI) processes at UMC's 300mm Fab 12i in Singapore. The 1.1um pixel BSI process, which will also be developed at Fab12i, will be available as an open platform for customers to power future smartphone generations that require high resolution and picture quality (>10MP). Po-Wen Yen, Senior Vice president of 12-inch Operations at UMC said, "We are happy to extend our relationship with our long-time partner STMicroelectronics through this co-development effort. This agreement is consistent with UMC's open collaboration strategy to deliver customer-driven foundry solutions to address ever evolving market requirements. We look forward to further strengthening our comprehensive technology portfolio with this CIS BSI process." "ST's previous successes in imaging technologies with UMC gives us great confidence in the development of this next-generation image-sensor process technology with UMC," said Eric Aussedat, Corporate Vice President Imaging, Bi-CMOS, ASIC and Silicon Photonics Group. "Our joint experience will enable ST to offer a state-of-the-art back-side illumination process to support all the applications and markets that we want to address."