Design of high-reliability LDO regulator incorporated with SCR based ESD protection circuit using transient switch structure

抄録

Circuit systems operating in low-voltage applications must provide stable output despite changes in load current. And without IC-level reliability, stable output voltage cannot be guaranteed. In this paper, the LDO regulator is designed to supply and discharge current in a switch format according to changes in load current. Additionally, an ESD protection circuit is absolutely required at the IC level. Therefore, in this paper, area efficiency and high robustness characteristics were verified by developing the ESD protection circuit, rather than using the conventional diode method to prevent ESD phenomenon. As a result, the proposed LDO regulator implemented in the 0.13µm BCD process was confirmed to maintain an undershoot voltage of 87.1mV and an overshoot voltage of 94.1mV at a load current of 350mA.