A high protection voltage dual-gate GaN HEMT clamp for electric vehicle application

This study presents the development of a novel ESD protection clamp by using dual-gate GaN HEMT technology for electric vehicle application. The proposed novel clamp possesses a low on-state resistance, uniform parasitic capacitance, and 500V trigger voltage for high voltage supply ESD applications. Implementation of the GaN ESD clamp demonstrates a human body mode (HBM) ESD test voltage more than 13kV stress voltage. In addition, the incorporated clamps use a fewer number of diodes than the conventional diode stacks at the trigger terminal, thereby making it size efficient and low effort impedance matching co-design which allow this approach to be an attractive solution for ESD protection.