High-Robustness and Low-Capacitance Silicon-Controlled Rectifier for High-Speed I/O ESD Protection

Author

Qiang Cui ; Salcedo, Javier A. ; Parthasarathy, Srinivasan ; Yuanzhong Zhou ; Liou, Juin J. ; Hajjar, J.J.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Volume

34

Issue

2

fYear

2013

fDate

Feb. 2013

Firstpage

178

Lastpage

180

Abstract

A high-robustness and low-capacitance clamp for on-chip electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is developed. The low capacitance is obtained by mitigating the capacitance associated with the lightly doped n-well/p-well junction. In addition to minimizing the capacitance, the high ESD robustness is achieved by optimizing independently within the same structure a silicon-controlled rectifier and a diode for the forward and reverse conduction processes, respectively. The new clamp with an area of 50 × 10 μm² is able to handle an ESD current in excess of 1.5 A, whereas the capacitance at zero bias is kept at 94 fF.

Keywords

electrostatic discharge; p-n junctions; thyristors; ESD; capacitance 94 fF; current 1.5 A; forward conduction processes; high-robustness; high-speed I/O ESD protection; low-capacitance silicon-controlled rectifier; n-well-p-well junction; on-chip electrostatic discharge protection; reverse conduction processes; Electrostatic discharges; Parasitic capacitance; Radio frequency; Thyristors; Transmission line measurements; Voltage measurement; Electrostatic discharge (ESD); parasitic capacitance; silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2012.2233708

Filename

6410331