SCR-based ESD protection device with low trigger and high robustness for I/O clamp

Abstract

This paper presents a novel silicon controlled rectifier (SCR)-based ESD protection device with a low trigger voltage and high robustness for I/O clamp. The low trigger voltage is achieved by injecting the trigger current into main SCR. We measured the I-V characteristics, leakage current analysis and ESD robustness characteristics. The proposed ESD protection circuit was validated using a transmission line pulse (TLP) system. From the experimental results, the proposed ESD protection device has a lower trigger voltage of 5.6V. Also, the robustness has measured to human body model (HBM) 8kV and machine model (MM) 600V. The proposed ESD protection device is designed in 0.35um Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) technologies.