Low Ron and high robustness ESD protection design for low‐voltage power clamp application

Abstract

An electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit with novel structure based on a silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) is proposed for 5 V ESD protection of integrated circuits. The proposed ESD protection circuit has large current driving capacity due to its low on-resistance and high ESD robustness in comparison with the conventional SCR-based ESD protection circuit. The conventional SCR-based ESD protection circuit and the proposed ESD protection circuit were fabricated using a 0.18 µm bipolar CMOS-double diffused metal-oxide semiconductor transistor (DMOS) process, and their electrical characteristics and ESD robustness were comparatively analysed using transmission line pulse measurements.