A Study on PCB's Latch-up Phenomenon by External Electrical Surge

Abstract

There are many cases that interrupt the production process because of malfunctions caused by electronic circuit boards which control equipment, but it is difficult to distinctly identify the causes in many cases. Especially, CMOS devices with the control logic circuit return automatically to normal state after their own faults. Therefore it is not easy to analyze the problems with electronic circuit boards. Recently, nuclear power plant experienced a failure due to the malfunction of electronic circuit boards and it was identified that the reason of the malfunction was because of latch-up phenomenon caused by external surge in electronic devices. This paper presents the causes and the phenomenon of latch-up by experiment and also a way using counter EMF diodes, noise filters and surge protective devices to prevent latch-up phenomenon from electronic circuit boards, finally confirms the effectiveness of the result by experiment.