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

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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 December 6, 2024)