everything PE recently interviewed Woods Fu, CEO at UN Semiconductor. UN Semiconductor specializes in the design and manufacture of semiconductor devices.
Q. Can you give a brief overview of UN Semiconductor? When was the company formed and how has it evolved over the years?
Woods Fu: UN Semiconductor, formerly known as a simple power chip design company, established its own brand UNSEMI in 2010. At the beginning of our establishment, we focused on lightning surge and ESD electrostatic protection devices and application solutions and built our application laboratory, which can provide customers with a full range of services from scheme design to circuit wiring re-testing and verification. In 2020, we established a power device business division.
Q. Can you provide an overview of your product portfolio? Which product segment is the largest for your company, and which one has experienced the fastest growth?
Woods Fu: There are two categories, one lightning surge and ESD protection device including TVS, TVS Array, MOV, GDT, SPG, SPM (surge protection module, etc), another category is a power device, which includes MOS, SiC MOS, Gan MOS, Switch Diodes, Schottky Diodes, DO, etc. At present, lightning surge and ESD protection devices have taken big market share. The greatest growth has come from TVS Array and MOS.
Q. Which market segments do you serve, and which one is the largest for your company?
Woods Fu: It’s mainly about industrial control, automotive electronics, and the TV home appliances market. And Industrial control accounts for the largest proportion.
Q. How does UN Semiconductor's GaN MOS compare to traditional silicon-based MOSFETs?
Woods Fu: About GaN MOS, currently, we only developed a few models, but due to the large competition in the Chinese market, the application is mainly used in chargers, the application is relatively narrow, so the market performance is not very good. However, it is electrically withstand voltage and reliability better than traditional MOSFETs.
Q. What are the key features of UN Semiconductor's linear voltage regulators? How do they differ from those of other manufacturers?
Woods Fu: Our company mainly makes three-terminal voltage regulators, which is a traditional device, such as 78M05, but our R&D team still doing technology accumulation, hoping to develop a voltage regulator with characteristics in the future.
Q. Can you tell us about the surge protection solutions provided by UN Semiconductor? What industries benefit most from UN Semiconductor's surge protection devices?
Woods Fu: We provide a variety of lightning surge solutions, such as Power AC220 V, 380 V; DC 5 V - 48 V; communication RS-485 RS232 CAN; RJ45, USB HDMI, I2C, I/O, and the lightning protection solution for 500 A - 20 KA. And at present, our main service object is the Internet of Things, security, and industrial automation.
Q. How does UN Semiconductor address the EMC requirements of the automotive electronics industry?
Woods Fu: Our company has testing equipment according to ISO7637-2/16950 standards and others, which can provide free testing services for customers. At the same time, we provide customers with professional solutions with suitable protection devices to help them solve the problems they encountered in the testing process.
Q. What are transient voltage suppressor (TVS) diodes? What are the key features of UN Semiconductor's TVS diodes?
Woods Fu: TVS diode is a kind of voltage-limiting protection device (not a switch protection device)of transient discharge. Its characteristics are that the PN junction can withstand a large current instantaneously, without burning out the PN junction, UN Semiconductor has a variety of TVS diodes, standard models, TVS Array, automotive grade, super high power, low capacitance, etc.
Q. How do UN Semiconductor's power management ICs differ from those of other manufacturers? What are the recent innovations in this domain?
Woods Fu: At present, our company has few products of power management IC, and we are still exploring this field, but we have developed industrial-grade power protection modules, which have surge protection, over-current protection, over-voltage protection, anti-reverse polarity protection, and other functions, and are currently being verified in small batches.
Q. Can you shed some light upon the customized semiconductor engineering services offered by UN Semiconductor?
Woods Fu: The semiconductor customization we provided is based on the needs of customer applications, and to develop the targeted devices or lightning protection modules. Of course, this needs to be discussed case by case.
Q. What are UN Semiconductor's key goals for 2024? Is there an expansion planned for the company's product lineup?
Woods Fu: The key goal for 2024 goal of UN semiconductors is to keep developing more models of MOS devices, as well as new surge devices. We planned mass production, power protection modules, GMOV (a product combining GDT and MOV), and the finalization of the first generation of solid-state relay products. To better cooperate with customers, the company's product lineup has been expanding.
About Woods Fu
Woods Fu, the CEO of UN Semiconductor, has been deeply ingrained in the semiconductor industry for 20 years and deeply understands surge protection and power semiconductors. He founded the UN semiconductor brand in 2010, establishing a surge and electrostatic verification center to help small and medium-sized enterprises solve the surge and ESD static problems during product development. And in 2018, an R&D team of power semiconductors was established. Currently, UN Semiconductor has successfully mass-produced MOS Schottky and other power devices.
