Electrical characteristics of novel SCR - based ESD protection for power clamp

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed a new structural protective device based on a silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) to protect ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) of an integrated circuit. The proposed device features latch-up immunity in a normal operation state by the low holding voltage of the existing SCR - based PSD protective device. The proposed device was analyzed to figure out electrical characteristics and tolerance robustness in terms of individual design variables (D1, D2, D3). As a result of the measurement, we were able to increase the holding voltage from 15.75V to 19.35V to the maximum depending on the length adjustment of design variables and checked the high robustness of the secondary breakdown current more than 4.6A with tolerance robustness. The proposed ESD protective device was made using 0.18µm Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS processing.