• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.1858-1864
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• 2009

In this paper, we design a non-volatile memory IP, 1-kb one-time programmable (OTP) memory, used for power management ICs. Since a conventional OTP cell uses an isolated NMOS transistor as an antifuse, there is an advantage of it big cell size with the BCD process. We use, therefore, a PMOS transistor as an antifuse in lieu of the isolated NMOS transistor and minimize the cell size by optimizing the size of a OTP cell transistor. And we add an ESD protection circuit to the OTP core circuit to prevent an arbitrary cell from being programmed by a high voltage between the terminals of the PMOS antifuse when the ESD test is done. Furthermore, we propose a method of turning on a PMOS pull-up transistor of high impedance to eliminate a gate coupling noise in reading a non-programmed cell. The layout size of the designed 1-kb PMOS-type antifuse OTP IP with Dongbu's $0.18{\mu}m$ BCD is $129.93{\times}452.26{\mu}m^2$.