CMOS on-chip electrostatic discharge protection circuit using four-SCR structures with low ESD-trigger voltage

A robust CMOS on-chip ESD protection circuit is proposed, which consists of four parasitic lateral SCR devices with low ESD trigger voltages to protect NMOS and PMOS devices of the internal circuits against the ESD pulses with both positive and negative polarities with respect to either VDD or VSS(GND) nodes. For each ESD stress with positive or negative polarity, there is an efficient and direct shunt path generated by the SCR low-impedance latching state to quickly bypass the ESD current. Thus, this four-SCR ESD protection circuit can perform very efficient protection in a small layout area. Since there is no diffusion or polysilicon resistor in the proposed ESD protection circuit, the RC delay between each I/O pad and its internal circuits is very low and high-speed applications are feasible. The experimental results show that this four-SCR protection circuit can successfully perform very effective protection against ESD damage. Moreover, the proposed ESD protection circuit is fully process-compatible with n-well or p-well CMOS and BiCMOS technologies.     

Complementary-LVTSCR ESD protection circuit for submicron CMOS VLSI/ULSI

There is one LVTSCR device merged with short-channel NMOS and another LVTSCR device merged with short-channel PMOS in a complementary style to offer effective and direct ESD discharging paths from the input or output pads to VSS and VDD power lines. The trigger voltages of LVTSCR devices are lowered to the snapback-breakdown voltages of short-channel NMOS and PMOS devices. This complementary-LVTSCR ESD protection circuit offers four different discharging paths to one-by-one bypass the four modes of ESD stresses at the pad, so it can effectively avoid unexpected ESD damage on internal circuits. Experimental results show that it provides excellent ESD protection capability in a smaller layout area as compared to the conventional CMOS ESD protection circuit. The device characteristics under a high-temperature environment of up to 150/spl deg/C are also experimentally investigated to guarantee the safety of this proposed ESD protection circuit.     

IC设计中的ESD保护技术探讨

ESD是集成电路设计中最重要的可靠性问题之一。IC失效中约有40%与ESD/EOS(电学应力)失效有关。为了设计出高可靠性的IC,解决ESD问题是非常必要的。文中讲述一款芯片ESD版图设计,并且在0.35μm 1P3M 5V CMOS工艺中验证,成功通过HBM-3000V和MM-300V测试。这款芯片的端口可以被分成输入端口、输出端口、电源和地。为了达到人体放电模型(HBM)-3000V和机器放电模型(MM)-300V,首先要设计一个好的ESD保护网络。解决办法是先让ESD的电荷从端口流向电源或地,然后从电源或地流向其他端口。其次,给每种端口设计好的ESD保护电路,最后完成一张ESD保护电路版图。     

Internal chip ESD phenomena beyond the protection circuit

Input/output electrostatic discharge (ESD) circuit requirements call for good protection of the pin with respect to both the ground and the power bus pins. Although effective protection can be designed at the pin many cases of damage phenomena are known to occur internal to the chip beyond the protection circuit. Here, the issues of protection between V_DD and V_SS are discussed first. This is followed by examples of how protection circuit performance can be sensitive to internal chip layout, independent of its effective design. Several illustrative actual case studies are reported to emphasize the internal chip ESD phenomena and their adverse effects     

An antifuse EPROM circuitry scheme for field-programmable repair inDRAM

An antifuse EPROM and 3-V programming circuit has been demonstrated in an existing 0.22-μm DRAM process technology and is fully compatible with 64-Mb SDRAM specifications. The antifuse circuitry uses an internal high-voltage generator for programming and a dynamic sense and static latch scheme that appropriately enables redundant DRAM address decoders at power-up. For efficient high voltage generation, a high-voltage-tolerant capacitor structure was formed by using the high fringing capacitance available between intralevel and interlevel polysilicon and metal lines. Furthermore, the programmable EPROM element was realized without any process modifications by utilizing destructive dielectric breakdown of the thin, highly reliable oxide-nitride-oxide (ONO) dielectric in the basic DRAM cell capacitor structure. This antifuse EPROM circuit enables implementation of field-programmable DRAM features such as memory repair, output impedance matching, and data encryption     

Analysis of a Parasitic‐Diode‐Triggered Electrostatic Discharge Protection Circuit for 12 V Applications

In this paper, an electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit is designed for use as a 12 V power clamp by using a parasitic‐diode‐triggered silicon controlled rectifier. The breakdown voltage and trigger voltage (V_t) of the proposed ESD protection circuit are improved by varying the length between the n‐well and the p‐well, and by adding n+/p+ floating regions. Moreover, the holding voltage (V_h) is improved by using segmented technology. The proposed circuit was fabricated using a 0.18‐μm bipolar‐CMOS‐DMOS process with a width of 100 μm. The electrical characteristics and robustness of the proposed ESD circuit were analyzed using transmission line pulse measurements and an ESD pulse generator. The electrical characteristics of the proposed circuit were also analyzed at high temperature (300 K to 500 K) to verify thermal performance. After optimization, the V_t of the proposed circuit increased from 14 V to 27.8 V, and V_h increased from 5.3 V to 13.6 V. The proposed circuit exhibited good robustness characteristics, enduring human‐body‐model surges at 7.4 kV and machine‐model surges at 450 V.     

Design on Power-Rail ESD Clamp Circuit for 3.3-V I/O Interface by Using Only 1-V/2.5-V Low-Voltage Devices in a 130-nm CMOS Process

A new power-rail electrostatic discharge (ESD) clamp circuit for application in 3.3-V mixed-voltage input–output (I/O) interface is proposed and verified in a 130-nm 1-V/2.5-V CMOS process. The devices in this power-rail ESD clamp circuit are all 1-V or 2.5-V low-voltage nMOS/pMOS devices, which are specially designed without suffering the gate-oxide reliability issue under 3.3-V I/O interface applications. A special ESD detection circuit realized with the low-voltage devices is designed and added in the power-rail ESD clamp circuit to improve ESD robustness of ESD clamp devices by substrate-triggered technique. The experimental results verified in a 130-nm CMOS process have proven the excellent effectiveness of this new proposed power-rail ESD clamp circuit.     

Electrostatic discharge in semiconductor devices: protectiontechniques

Electrostatic discharges (ESDs) are everywhere-in our homes and businesses. Even the manufacturers of the electronics experience ESD failures in their factories. Electronic devices are sensitive to ESD. ESD results in failure of our computers, calculators, and car phones. There are ways to protect these sensitive components. This paper looks at ESD protection from a two-pronged approach: reducing the likelihood of having an ESD event and improving the robustness of the devices themselves. The first approach focuses on reducing the amount of charge that is developed and controlling the redistribution of any charges that are developed The second approach reviews ways to improve the circuit robustness by improving individual circuit elements and by adding additional elements for charge flow control and voltage clamping     

Using charged device model testing to eliminate real-world ESD failures

Of 30 bipolar, BiCMOS, and CMOS monolithic, integrated circuit products that were ESD classified to the socketed Charged Device Model (CDM), 27 had ≥500 V withstand voltages and experienced no real-world CDM failures. Two of the three focus products with < 500 V withstand voltages initially had numerous manufacturing-induced CDM failures. Analysis of these two products showed that both socketed and non-socketed CDM testing induced damage at the same failure sites as identified on real-world CDM failures. However, only non-socketed CDM testing consistently reproduced the subtle damage observed on the real-world failures. On one of the focus products, the more severe damage induced by socketed CDM testing resulted in an open circuit rather than the resistive short that occurred on both the non-socketed and real-world CDM failures.Once the physics of CDM failure on the three focus products were fully understood, the ESD redesigns were relatively straightforward. On all three products, diffused series resistors and/or clamping devices with fast response times were added to the pins with inadequate CDM robustness. For each product, these redesigns boosted the socketed CDM withstand voltages for the previously susceptible pins to ≥1500 V and eliminated real-world CDM failures.Based on this work, a combined socketed and non-socketed CDM test approach is proposed for classifying/evaluating products and driving CDM robustness improvements. Guidelines for CDM testing and CDM improvement programs are also provided.     

Development of substrate-pumped nMOS protection for a 0.13 μm technology

A methodology is presented for improved process and circuit development of substrate-pumped nMOS protection. ESD process development is accelerated by applying factor analysis to completed non-ESD experiments. Factor analysis is complemented by a straightforward diagnosis of nMOS snapback. This approach enabled verification of two process solutions, including a novel method, in one fab cycle-time. HBM data that shows the substrate-pumped nMOS can provide dramatically higher protection than estimated from conventional I_t2 measurements. This motivates improved ESD circuit development. The nMOS clamp transistor is characterized as an actively biased LNPN, which is how it is used in a substrate-pumped protection circuit. A systematic approach to circuit development is described that is based upon empirical characterization of well-defined circuit components under conditions approximating ESD.     

Self-timed is self-checking

Self-checking circuits detect (at least some of) their own faults. We describe self-timed circuits, including combinational logic and sequential machines, which either halt or generate illegal output if they include any single stuck-at faults. The self-timed circuits employ dual rail data encoding to implement ternary logic of 0, 1, andundefined states; the fourth state is used to signal illegal output and is shown to result only from certain circuit faults. The self-timed circuits also employ four-phase signaling according to a well-defined protocol of communications between the circuit and its environment; failures due to certain faults prevent the circuit from communicating properly, thus causing the circuit to halt. We show that any single stuck-at fault falls in either the first or the second category, thus providing complete fault coverage through self checking. No hardware needs to be added to our circuits to achieve the complete self-checking property; further, the circuit is guaranteed to never generate a legal but erroneous output if it contains a fault. Minimal hardware is needed to detect that a circuit has either halted or has generated an illegal output.     

ESD laboratory simulations and signature analysis of a CMOS programmable logic product

It is well established in the semiconductor I/C industry that the proportion of customer field returns attributed to damage resulting from electrical over-stress (EOS) and electro-static discharge (ESD) can amount to 40% to 50% (Cook C, Daniel S. Characteristics and failure analysis of advanced CMOS submicron ESD protection structures. EOS/ESD symposium proceedings ?14, Dallas, TX, 1992. p. 147; Denson WK, Green TJ. A review of EOS/ESD field failures in military equipment. EOS/ESO symposium proceedings-10, 1988. p. 7. Straub RJ. Automotive Electronics IC Reliability. CICC Proceedings, 1990; Euzent BL, Maloney TJ, Donner II R. Reducing field failure rate within proven EOS/ESO design. EOS/ESO Symposium Proceedings ?13, Los Vegas, NV, 1991. p. 59). ESD events are the subset of EOS events caused by high voltages that are associated with electrostatic charge. Although additional hard and soft failures can occur in the factory, these are normally screened by effective test programs. It is therefore necessary to determine the probable cause of failure before cost effective corrective action can be initiated.Distinguishing between EOS and ESD failures and differentiating the subtle differences between damage due to the several distinct ESD models continues to challenge failure analysis capabilities as dimensions shrink and critical defect sizes are reduced. Many of the damage sites are not visible with optical microscopy. De-processing together with very high magnification examination using the scanning electron microscope (SEM) is most often necessary. However, the use of test model simulators to replicate the ESD events can most often replicate a failure signature, i.e. a unique die location and morphology associated with the specific model (Morgan IH. ESO Failure Analysis Signatures. Proceedings of the 3rd ESO Forum, Grain, Germany, 1993. p. 275).This paper summarizes the evaluation performed on a standard programmable logic complimentary metal-oxide silican (CMOS) product to ascertain the ESD immunity. The study entailed ESD simulation using a variety of ESD models, conducting detailed physical failure analysis and then comparing the results with documented analyses performed on customer field returns and factory failures. As a result of the differences in current stress magnitude and over-stress time domain, the location, type and severity of damage at the failure site is known to show considerable variation (Morgan IH. A Handbook of ESO models. AMD Internal Publication, 1992 (available from AMD literature department upon request)). The purpose of the study was to develop a catalogue of failure signatures, and to determine to what extent this catalogue could be used to relate a signature to electrical failure for a particular die and pin function.     

ESD protection design on analog pin with very low input capacitancefor high-frequency or current-mode applications

An electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection design is proposed to solve the ESD protection challenge to the analog pins: for high-frequency or current-mode applications, By including an efficient power-rails clamp circuit in the analog input/output (I/O) pin, the device dimension (W/L) of an ESD clamp device connected to the I/O pad in the analog ESD protection circuit can be reduced to only 50/0.5 (μm/μm) in a 0.35-μm silicided CMOS process, but it can sustain the human body model (HBM) and machine model (MM) ESD level of up to 6 kV (400 V). With such a smaller device dimension, the input capacitance of this analog ESD protection circuit can be significantly reduced to only ~1.0 pF (including the bond-pad capacitance) for high-frequency applications     

Charge-transferred presensing, negatively precharged word-line, and temperature-insensitive power-up schemes for low-voltage DRAMs

A 256-Mb SDRAM is implemented with a 0.12-/spl mu/m technology to verify three circuit schemes suitable for low-voltage operation. First, a new charge-transferred presensing achieves fast stable low-voltage sensing performance without additional bias levels required in conventional charge-transferred presensing schemes. Second, a negative word-line scheme is proposed to bypass the majority of discharging current to VSS. Without switching signals, main discharging paths are automatically switched from VSS to VBB2 in response to the voltage of each discharging node itself. Finally, to initialize internal nodes during power-up, a temperature-insensitive power-up pulse generator is also proposed. The temperature coefficient of the setup voltage is adjustable through optimization of circuit parameters.     

An area-efficient LDMOS-SCR ESD protection device for the I/O of power IC application

Lateral Double diffused Metal Oxide Semiconductor (LDMOS) transistors are widely used in HV output circuit and its Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) problem have been well studied. LDMOS embed Silicon Controlled Rectifier (LDMOS-SCR) can be used to improve LDMOS ESD robustness. In order to further enhance the ESD self-protection capability of LDMOS-SCR, a new device LDMOS-SCR with a floating P+ implant region (FP-LDMOS-SCR) is proposed in this paper. Due to the floating P+ implant region is placed near the drain end, It2 of the new FP-LDMOS-SCR device increases obviously, compared with traditional LDMOS and LDMOS-SCR devices. The FP-LDMOS-SCR′s It2 with one floating P+ is 1.3 A and that with two floating P+ is 2.7 A. The results of Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) simulations will be presented in this paper to help analysis the physical mechanism and observe the ESD behavior of the LDMOS-SCR. The proposed FP-LDMOS-SCR, same driver capability with LDMOS, can be applied in HV output circuit and also provide its ESD self-protection through shunted ESD stress to ground.     

A new on-chip ESD protection circuit with dual parasitic SCRstructures for CMOS VLSI

A new CMOS on-chip electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit which consists of dual parasitic SCR structures is proposed and investigated. Experimental results show that with a small layout area of 8800 μ², the protection circuit can successfully perform negative and positive ESD protection with failure thresholds greater than ±1 and ±10 kV in machine-mode (MM) and human-body-mode (HBM) testing, respectively. The low ESD trigger voltages in both SCRs can be readily achieved through proper circuit design and without involving device or junction breakdown. The input capacitance of the proposed protection circuit is very low and no diffusion resistor between I/O pad and internal circuits is required, so it is suitable for high-speed applications. Moreover, this ESD protection circuit is fully process compatible with CMOS technologies     

Electrostatic discharge protection scheme without leakage current path for CMOS IC operating in power-down-mode condition on a system board

A new design on the electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection scheme for CMOS IC operating in power-down-mode condition is proposed. By adding a VDD_ESD bus line and diodes, the new proposed ESD protection scheme can block the leakage current from I/O pin to VDD power line to avoid malfunction during power-down-mode operating condition. During normal circuit operating condition, the new proposed ESD protection schemes have no leakage path to interfere with the normal circuit functions. The whole-chip ESD protection design can be achieved by insertion of ESD clamp circuits between VSS power line and both VDD power line and VDD ESD bus line. Experimental results have verified that the human-body-model (HBM) ESD level of this new scheme can be greater than 7.5 kV in a 0.35-μm silicided CMOS process. Furthermore, output-swing improvement circuit is proposed to achieve the full swing of output voltage level during normal circuit operating condition.     

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection for CMOS output buffers in scaled-down VLSI technology

To provide area-efficient output ESD protection for the scaled-down CMOS VLSI, a new output ESD protection is proposed. In the new output ESD protection circuit, there are two novel devices, the PTLSCR (PMOS-trigger lateral SCR) and the NTLSCR (NMOS-trigger lateral SCR). The PTLSCR is in parallel and merged with the output PMOS, and the NTLSCR is in parallel and merged with the output NMOS, to provide area-efficient ESD protection for CMOS output buffers. The trigger voltages of PTLSCR and NTLSCR are lowered below the breakdown voltages of the output PMOS and NMOS in the CMOS output buffer. The PTLSCR and NTLSCR are guaranteed to be turned on first before the output PMOS or NMOS are broken down by the ESD voltage. Experimental results have shown that the PTLSCR and NTLSCR can sustain over 4000 V (700 V) of the human-body-model (machine-model) ESD stresses within a very small layout area in a 0.6 μm CMOS technology with LDD and polycide processes. The noise margin of the proposed output ESD protection design is greater than 8 V (lower than −3.3 V) to avoid the undesired triggering on the NTLSCR (PTLSCR) due to the overshooting (undershooting) voltage pulse on the output pad when the IC is under normal operating conditions with 5 V VDD and 0 V VSS power supplies.     

混合信号IC的ESD保护电路设计

从电路设计的角度,介绍了混合信号IC的输入、输出、电源箝位ESD保护电路.在此基础上,构建了一种混合信号IC全芯片ESD保护电路结构.该结构采用二极管正偏放电模式,以实现在较小的寄生电容情况下达到足够的ESD强度;另外,该结构在任意两个pad间均能形成ESD放电通路,同时将不同的电源域进行了隔离.     

TCAD and SPICE modeling help solve ESD protection issues in analog CMOS technology

The number of circuit design iterations due to electrostatic discharge (ESD) failures increases with the complexity of VLSI technologies and their shrinking. In this paper, we show how TCAD and ESD SPICE modeling can be used to solve ESD protection issues in an analog CMOS technology.