• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.111-118
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• 2008

In this paper, novel latch-up prevention method that employs power-up sequential switches has been proposed to relieve latch-up problem in liquid crystal display (LCD) driver ICs. These sequential switches are inserted in the 2'nd and 3'rd boosting stages, and are used to short the emitter-base terminals of parasitic p-n-p-n circuit before relevant boosting stages are activated during power-up sequence. To verily the performance of the proposed method, test chips were designed and fabricated in a 0.13-um CMOS process technology. The measurement results indicated that, while the conventional LCD driver If entered latch-up mode at $50^{\circ}C$ accompanying a significant amount of excess current, the driver IC adopting the proposed method showed no latch-up phenomenon up to $100^{\circ}C$ and maintained normal current level of 0.9mA.