Variable Lateral Silicon Controlled Rectifier as an ESD Protection

摘要

The Variable lateral Silicon Controlled Rectifier (VLSCR) is a SCR based structure with the possibility to tune I-V snaphack characteristics. This effect is important for an ESD (electrostatic discharge) protection design. The ESD protection structures act as a protection of integrated circuits against parasitic electrostatic discharge. Among often used structures belong structures having snapback type of I-V characteristic. Typical is a gate-grounded NMOS transistor [3] or a SCR [3]. This text is dealing with the VLSCR structure which enables I-V snapback characteristics tuning according to the application demand. Simulated technology was 0.5 μm CMOS very high voltage (VHV Integrated Circuits). Measurement was done in 1.5 μm BiCMOS process.