A novel Electrostatic Discharge protection design based on SCR

A novel silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) device with high-current low-voltage triggering characteristics is proposed to improve Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) immunity of the input gate oxide based on a standard 2-μm CMOS technology. The numeral simulation results shows that the device has a low trigger voltage (~11V) to effectively protect the gate oxide under ESD-stress conditions, and it also has a higher trigger current (~0.5A) to avoid the unexpected triggering when the IC is in the normal operating condition. The noise margin against overshooting voltage pulse on the input pad can be larger than 25V. At least a 4000V ESD robustness under PS-mode in Human-Body-Model (HBM) can be obtained with an area of 200μm × 17μm.