Improved stacked-diode ESD protection in nanoscale CMOS technology

Abstract

An improved electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection design, using stacked diodes with silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR), is presented to protect the radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits in nanoscale CMOS process. Using the stacked diodes and SCR together to form diode-triggered-SCR-like paths, the critical ESD current paths are enhanced. The test circuits of the proposed ESD protection and conventional designs are compared in silicon chip. As verified in a 0.18 µm CMOS process, the proposed design exhibits a lower clamping voltage and higher current handling ability during ESD stress conditions, and sufficiently low parasitic capacitance and leakage current during normal circuit operating conditions. Therefore, the proposed design is suitable for ESD protection of RF circuits in low-voltage CMOS process.

Investigation of soft ESD failure on capacitive transimpedance amplifier for hybrid integrated infrared sensor

“…For its catastrophic consequence, electrostatic discharge (ESD) induced hard failures such as thermal breakdowns of microelectronic device and metal interconnect, have been well understood and drawn much attention of the researchers in the world [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Nevertheless, the problems of ESD induced soft failure such as performance degradation and increased leakage current, are still not fully comprehended and investigated [9,10,11,12].…”

Investigation of parasitic bipolar transistor in rail-based electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuits

“…ESD stress causes large electric fields and high current densities, resulting in breakdown of the oxide of CMOS and thermal damage [4,5,6,7]. ESD protection in high-speed ICs becomes more challenging than others because it requests low parasitic capacitance, low leakage current and almost zero series resistance [8,9,10]. To address this, dual-diode based ESD protection circuits, often named "rail-based" ESD protection circuits [11], are widely implemented for radio-frequency (RF), digital and high-speed interface ICs [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21].…”

Design of a power efficient self-adaptive LVDS driver

“…Actually, differential voltage changes significantly with the changes of chip packaging, electro-static discharge (ESD) structure [8], receiver circuit architecture and printed circuit board (PCB) trace parameters. Fig.…”