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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Continuously scaling down and decreasing operation voltages of ICs, from the 5 V TTL-compatible voltage to 3.3 V, then 1.2 V, and now 0.8 V for low-power ICs, results in more stringent electrostatic discharge protection design requirements, such as a narrow ESD design window, low operation voltage, and high ESD robustness. Based on traditional diode string and diode-triggered silicon-controlled rectifiers, an enhanced diode-triggered silicon-controlled rectifier is proposed to meet the requirements of low-voltage integrated circuits as bidirectional electrostatic discharge protection. The new device employs an additional PMOS and NMOS in the N-well and P-well, respectively, to offer additional current paths along the surface to significantly enhance its robustness. TCAD simulation shows that the device is triggered by both the diode strings and embedded MOS, making the device turn on faster and the current distribution more uniform during the ON state owing to the additional surface current paths. The proposed new device has excellent dual-directional ESD protection performance with a figure of merit of 4.01 mA/um2, which is about a 71% improvement compared with the conventional diode-triggered silicon-controlled rectifier. It also has higher area efficiency, lower trigger voltage, lower current leakage, and a faster turn-on speed. The proposed enhanced diode-triggered silicon-controlled rectifier is an attractive ESD protection solution for ultra-low-voltage ICs.

Details

Title
High Area Efficiency Bidirectional Silicon-Controlled Rectifier for Low-Voltage Electrostatic Discharge Protection
Author
Chen, Yipeng 1 ; Zhao, Dongyan 2 ; Zhou, Shicong 2 ; Zhu, Xinyu 1 ; Gao, Feng 3 ; Yuan, Yidong 2 ; Hu, Yi 2 ; Zhao, Tianting 2 ; Li, Xiaojuan 2 ; Dong, Shurong 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Electronic Devices and Smart Systems of Zhejiang Province, College of Information Science & Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China; [email protected] (Y.C.); [email protected] (X.Z.) 
 Beijing Smart-chip Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing 102299, China; [email protected] (D.Z.); [email protected] (S.Z.); [email protected] (Y.Y.); [email protected] (Y.H.); [email protected] (T.Z.); [email protected] (X.L.) 
 Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Electronic Devices and Smart Systems of Zhejiang Province, College of Information Science & Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China; [email protected] (Y.C.); [email protected] (X.Z.); ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 311215, China 
First page
4011
Publication year
2023
Publication date
2023
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20799292
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2876427385
Copyright
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.