An enhanced TLP system for ESD characterization in semiconductor technologies

Standard transmission line pulse (TLP) test system has been studied for evaluating ESD performance of semiconductor devices accurately. The impedance matching techniques in the standard transmission line pulse (TLP) test system can effectively eliminate the pulse waveform distortion, but increases the power attenuation. Thus the force imposed to the device under test is far less than the energy TLP delivered. Most of the researchers tried to solve the problem by promoting the charging voltage to obtain high-current discharge source. In this paper, parallel transmission line (PTL) technique is presented, which discharges the high transient current pulse with nearly doubled energies to enhance the cost-effectiveness of the system. In addition, improved attenuator and filter with perfect matching characteristic are designed in order to adapt to the new system.