Supertex Announces a New High Voltage MEMS Driver

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 24, 2013) - Supertex ( NASDAQ : SUPX ), a recognized leader in high voltage analog and mixed signal integrated circuits (ICs), today announced, as a part of its future business strategy, the intent to provide greater focus and support to the Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) marketplace. The Company considers the growing MEMS market and its applications to be a critical focus for application of the Company's unique system and processing expertise. As part of this new strategy, Supertex released the new HV264 Quad High Voltage Amplifier Array.

MEMS applications continue to evolve and have an ever increasing impact on products and our daily lives in most major electronics markets, from high reliability, optical datacom, and medical, to industrial and consumer. Supertex is expanding its standard and custom product development to drive MEMS solutions. Supertex will increase its driver products for optical switching applications, as well as expand into a broader range of MEMS solutions. Our products will find use in communications, diagnostics and analysis, manufacturing, fabrication, and more.

The HV264 will find use in a variety of MEMS and other High Voltage Drive applications, such as driving optical MEMS and piezoelectric transducers. Versus the large amplifier array of most available solutions, the base of 4 amplifiers offers significant advantages in design layout and modularization to engineers tackling the large mix of applications for MEMS and Piezoelectric solutions. Some areas of application are MEMs micromirror drives as seen in optical networking and communications, test and measurement, printing, component alignment, 3D position tracking and positioning such as for gaming, laser marking, small and transparent displays, biomedical instrumentation and imaging, and more. Potential piezoelectric applications include security sensors, fluid measurement, and more.

The four channels of the HV264 consist of four independent high voltage amplifiers, capable of inverting or non-inverting configurations. The outputs can swing at 9V/µs, measured with a 200V supply and a 15pF load. The HV264 operates with a 200V and a 5V supply. With an integrated high value gain setting resistor for internal feedback (66.7V/V), no external passives for feedback are needed. Internal voltage swing is designed to proceed between 50mV and 2.85V on the input, with the output ranging from 3.33V to Vpp - 10V (the dc supply voltage minus 10V.)

Supertex has been a key supplier of solutions in this space, and the Company is working to expand its relationship with other key MEMS suppliers. Supertex will continue to improve its unique process capabilities, and provide increasing levels of service and value to its base of MEMS customers.

Samples of HV264TS-G are available from stock in a Pb(free)/RoHS compliant 24-Lead TSSOP package. Lead-time for production quantities is 4 - 6 weeks, ARO. The HV264TS-G is priced at USD$6.16 each for 1K quantities. The HV264DB1 demo board is also available for evaluation. HV264 is a derivative chip of the MEMS driver family which includes HV254, HV256 and HV257, all of which contain 32 channels. These datasheets can be found the website: www.supertex.com .

About Supertex Supertex, Inc. is a publicly held mixed signal semiconductor manufacturer, focused in high voltage analog and mixed signal products for use in the medical, LED lighting, printer and display, industrial and telecommunication industries. Supertex product, corporate and financial information is readily available at www.supertex.com .