• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.150-154
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• 2019

In the design of semiconductor integrated circuits, ESD is one of the important issues related to product quality improvement and reliability. In particular, as the process progresses and the thickness of the gate oxide film decreases, ESD is recognized as an important problem of integrated circuit design. Many ESD protection circuits have been studied to solve such ESD problems. In addition, the proposed device can modify the existing SCR structure without adding external circuit to effectively protect the gate oxide of the internal circuit by low trigger voltage, and prevent the undesired latch-up phenomenon in the steady state with high holding voltage. In this paper, SCR-based novel ESD(Electro-Static Discharge) device with the high holding voltage has been proposed. The proposed device has the lower triggering voltage without an external trigger circuitry and the high holding voltage to prevent latch-up phenomenon during the normal condition. Using TCAD simulation results, not only the design factors that influence the holding voltage, but also comparison of conventional ESD protection device(ggNMOS, SCR), are explained. The proposed device was fabricated using 0.35um BCD process and was measured electrical characteristic and robustness. In the result, the proposed device has triggering voltage of 13.1V and holding voltage of 11.4V and HBM 5kV, MM 250V ESD robustness.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.11 no.1 s.20
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• pp.54-60
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• 2007

In this study novel ESD protection device, namely, N/P-type Low Voltage Triggered SCR, has been proposed, for high speed I/O interface. Proposed device could lower high trigger voltage($\sim$20V) of conventional SCR and reduce latch-up phenomenon of protection device during the normal condition. In this Study, the proposed NPLVTSCR has been simulated using TMA MEDICI device simulator for electrical characteristic. Also the proposed device's test pattern was fabricated using 90nm TSMC's CMOS process and was measured electrical characteristic and robustness. In the result, NPLVTSCR has 3.2V $\sim$ 7.5V trigger voltage and 2.3V $\sim$ 3.2V holding voltage by changing PMOS gate length and it has about 2kV, 7.5A HBM ESD robustness(IEC61000-4-2).

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.378-384
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• 2013

We have investigated the electrical characteristics of SCR(Silicon Controlled Rectifier)-based ESD power clamp circuit with high holding voltage and dual-directional ESD protection cells for a whole-chip ESD protection. The measurement results indicate that the dimension of n/p-well and p-drift has a great effect on holding voltage (2V-5V). Also A dual-directional ESD protection circuit is designed for I/O ESD protection application. The trigger voltage and the holding voltage are measured to 5V and 3V respectively. In comparison with typical ESD protection schemes for whole-chip ESD protection, this ESD protection device can provide an effective protection for ICs against ESD pulses in the two opposite directions, so this design scheme for whole-chip ESD protection can be discharged in ESD-stress mode (PD, ND, PS, NS) as well as VDD-VSS mode. Finally, a whole-chip ESD protection can be applied to 2.5~3.3V VDD applications. The robustness of the novel ESD protection cells are measured to HBM 8kV and MM 400V.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.234-239
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• 2017

In this paper, we propose an ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) protection circuit based on a new structure of SCR (Silicon Controlled Rectifier) embedded with PMOS structure. The proposed ESD protection circuit has a built-in PMOS structure and has a latch-up immunity characteristic and an improved tolerance characteristic. To verify the characteristics of the proposed ESD protection circuit and to analyze its operating characteristics, we compared and analyzed the characteristics of the existing ESD protection circuit using TCAD simulation. Simulation results show that the proposed protection ESD protection circuit has superior latch-up immunity characteristics like the existing SCR-based ESD protection device HHVSCR (High Holding Voltage SCR). Also, according to the results of the HBM (Human Body Model) maximum temperature test, the proposed ESD protection circuit has a maximum temperature value of 355K, which is about 20K lower than the existing HHVSCR 373K. In addition, the proposed ESD protection circuit with improved electrical characteristics is designed by applying N-STACK technology. As a result of the simulation, the proposed ESD protection circuit has a holding voltage characteristic of 2.5V in a single structure, and the holding voltage increased to 2-STACK 4.2V, 3-STACK 6.3V, 4-STACK 9.1V.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1673-1681
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• 2015

A low dropout (LDO) regulator with a wide-bandwidth is proposed in this paper. The regulator features a Human Body Model (HBM) 8kV-class high robustness ElectroStatic Discharge (ESD) protection circuit, and two error amplifiers (one with low gain and wide bandwidth, and the other with high gain and narrow bandwidth). The dual error amplifiers are located within the feedback loop of the LDO regulator, and they selectively amplify the signal according to its ripples. The proposed LDO regulator is more efficient in its regulation process because of its selective amplification according to frequency and bandwidth. Furthermore, the proposed regulator has the same gain as a conventional LDO at 62 dB with a 130 kHz-wide bandwidth, which is approximately 3.5 times that of a conventional LDO. The proposed device presents a fast response with improved load and line regulation characteristics. In addition, to prevent an increase in the area of the circuit, a body-driven fabrication technique was used for the error amplifier and the pass transistor. The proposed LDO regulator has an input voltage range of 2.5 V to 4.5 V, and it provides a load current of 100 mA in an output voltage range of 1.2 V to 4.1 V. In addition, to prevent damage in the Integrated Circuit (IC) as a result of static electricity, the reliability of IC was improved by embedding a self-produced 8 kV-class (Chip level) ESD protection circuit of a P-substrate-Triggered Silicon Controlled Rectifier (PTSCR) type with high robustness characteristics.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.495-502
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• 2014

Fast recovery diodes (FRDs) were developed using the $p^{{+}{+}}/n^-/n^{{+}{+}}$ epitaxial layers grown by low temperature epitaxy technology. We investigated the effect of electrostatic discharge (ESD) stresses on their electrical and switching properties using current-voltage (I-V) and reverse recovery time analyses. The FRDs presented a high breakdown voltage, >450 V, and a low reverse leakage current, < $10^{-9}$ A. From the temperature dependence of thermal activation energy, the reverse leakage current was dominated by thermal generation-recombination and diffusion, respectively, at low and high temperature regions. By virtue of the abrupt junction and the Pt drive-in for the controlling of carrier lifetime, the soft reverse recovery behavior could be obtained along with a well-controlled reverse recovery time of 21.12 ns. The FRDs exhibited excellent ESD robustness with negligible degradations in the I-V and the reverse recovery characteristics up to ${\pm}5.5$ kV of HBM and ${\pm}3.5$ kV of IEC61000-4-2 shocks. Likewise, transmission line pulse (TLP) analysis reveals that the FRDs can handle the maximum peak pulse current, $I_{pp,max}$, up to 30 A in the forward mode and down to - 24 A in the reverse mode. The robust ESD property can improve the long term reliability of various power applications such as automobile and switching mode power supply.