Novel Electrostatic Discharge Protection Structure for a Monolithic Gas Sensor Systems-On-A-Chip

Published

March 1, 2005

Author(s)

Javier A. Salcedo, Juin J. Liou, Muhammad Afridi, Allen R. Hefner Jr.

Abstract

A new On-Chip Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) protection scheme is demonstrated for MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS)-based Embedded Sensor (ES) System-on-a-Chip (SoC). The ESD protection scheme includes ground-referenced protection cells implemented with novel multifinger thyristor-type devices for 1) the Input/Output (I/O) protection, 2) the power supply clamp, and 3) the protection at the internal sensors' electrodes. The I-V characteristics of the thyristor-type protection cells are adjusted for providing an optimum ESD protection per unit area. Transmission Line Pulsing (TLP) measurements and ESD testing show a superb high conductance on-state I-V characteristics with no latch-up problem when thyristor-type devices are subjected to an ESD event, while very low leakage current is obtained at the SoC operating voltage.

Proceedings Title

Proc., Conference Proceedings - IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems

Conference Dates

May 23-26, 2005

Conference Location

Kobe, 1, JA

Conference Title

IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

ESD Protection, Gas sensor, HBM, MEMS, SoC, Thyristor, TLP

Citation

Salcedo, J. , Liou, J. , Afridi, M. and Hefner Jr., A. (2005), Novel Electrostatic Discharge Protection Structure for a Monolithic Gas Sensor Systems-On-A-Chip, Proc., Conference Proceedings - IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Kobe, 1, JA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=31891 (Accessed October 15, 2025)