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Z. H. Liu, E. Rosenbaum, P. K. Ko, C. Hu, Y. C. Cheng, C. G. Sodini, B. J. Gross and T. P. Ma, “A Comparative Study of the Effect of Dynamic Stressing on High-Field Endurance and Stability of Reoxidized-Nitrided, Fluorinated and Conventional Oxides,” International Electron Devices Meeting, Washington, 8-11 February1991, pp. 723-726.

has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: A Thyristor-Only Input ESD Protection Scheme for CMOS RF ICs

  AUTHORS: Jin Young Choi, Choongkoo Park

  KEYWORDS: ESD Protection, HBM, Thyristor, Mixed-Mode Simulation, RF ICs

  JOURNAL NAME: Circuits and Systems, Vol.2 No.3, July 6, 2011

  ABSTRACT: We propose an input protection scheme composed of thyristor devices only without using a clamp NMOS device in order to minimize the area consumed by a pad structure in CMOS RF ICs. For this purpose, we suggest low-voltage triggering thyristor protection device structures assuming usage of standard CMOS processes, and attempt an in-depth comparison study with a conventional thyristor protection scheme incorporating a clamp NMOS device. The comparison study mainly focuses on robustness against the HBM ESD in terms of peak voltages applied to gate oxides in an input buffer and lattice heating inside protection devices based on DC and mixed-mode transient analyses utilizing a 2-dimensional device simulator. We constructed an equivalent circuit for the input HBM test environment of the CMOS chip equipped with the input ESD protection devices. And by executing mixed-mode simulations including up to four protection devices and analyzing the results for five different test modes, we attempt a detailed analysis on the problems which can occur in real HBM tests. We figure out strength of the proposed thyristor-only protection scheme, and suggest guidelines relating the design of the protection devices and circuits.