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ESD circuit  question? (Read 12466 times)
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ESD circuit  question?
Sep 20th, 2006, 11:27pm
 
Hi all:
   In the following ESD circuit picture, Why add two resister Rp1, Rn1? Can I simplely short it?
    Picture from JSSC VOL. 35, NO. 8, AUGUST 2000 pp.1194;
ESD Protection Design on Analog Pin with Very Low Input Capacitance for High-Frequency or Current-Mode Applications
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Geoffrey_Coram
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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #1 - Oct 9th, 2006, 6:19am
 
I believe those resistors allow "dv/dt triggering" -- if the pad voltage rises quickly, the Cgd of the MOS devices causes the gate to rise quickly also, as long as it is not shorted to ground.  However, in some cases, the parasitic resistance of the interconnect is sufficient, so one doesn't need explicit resistors.
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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #2 - Oct 10th, 2006, 6:59am
 

The comment regarding the dv/dt triggering is correct.
It is very much a function of process technology, but generally, by generating a gate voltage during the initial phase of the ESD event, channel current flows, and this helps to lower the actual trigger threshold (which typically needs to be higher than the reverse breakdown voltage of the drain junction).  The channel current can force the triggering to be lower than this limit and induce an earlier snapback.

The size of the resistor is "supposed" to be sized so as to generate the proper channel charge for ESD events in question.  HBM/MM type events will not generate a lot of coupled voltage to the gate due to the slow risetimes, thus requiring larger resistors, both to allow for coupling as well as to lengthen the time constant on the gate node.  CDM type events, with fast rise times will generate larger coupled voltages to the gate, in shorter time periods, and thus require smaller resistors.
You have to ask yourself then , by how much can I lower the trigger point for snapback with an applied Vgs on the ESD device (a process related question), and what type of esd events am I most concerned about/targeting (a design/product related question).
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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #3 - Oct 10th, 2006, 8:08am
 
I forgot to mention that if Dp1 and Dn1 are efficeintly laid out as part of the mos geometries, than there is really no need to worry to much about snapback events and you may be fine with simply grounding the gates (which a lot of people do, even though it is the worst case protection arranbgement if you are dependent on snapback), because the diodes will do the job.

That being said, assuming the protection on the Vcc domain is sufficient, get rid of the MOS devices altogether and just build diodes, they really do work much better; in general.
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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #4 - Oct 10th, 2006, 9:59pm
 
thanks all very much!
 Can I simply comprehend those as follow?
 When ESD procedure occur ,The Rp and Rn will product  IR-drop voltage, which serve as Vgs of MOS conducting the MOS channel. Then the MOS channel steers the ESD current  and parallel working with Dp or Dn .
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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #5 - Oct 10th, 2006, 10:40pm
 
You are almost there.

It is improtant to remember that the channel current created by the Vgs is negligible from an ESD perspective, it may only be a few mA's at best, the point is that it causes the snapback of the device to occur at a lower voltage (in ESD terms, a lower trigger voltage or Vt1).  This is a result of the fact that the snapback events are triggered by carriers flowing across the drain-bulk junction and then dropping an IR across the parasitic substrate resistance, triggering the lateral NPN (or PNP in PMOS).

I am including a very crude drawing I just made with MS-Paint (excuse the unprofessional look of the chart).  In it I have drawn two curves, a grounded gate nmos(ggNMOS) and the resistor-gate connected NMOS or gate-coupled NMOS (gcNMOS in ESD terminology).  The gate coupling causes the lower Vt1.

Another benefit of gate coulping is that you can actually ensure better mutli-finger triggering of the ESD device.
I will again state that I would simply use diodes and throw away the MOS devices.  (IMHO only).
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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #6 - Oct 16th, 2006, 12:29am
 

SRF
   Thanks for you patience. Your answer is really a great help to me, althought there is still somthing i am not quite sure about. I am a fresh comer to the area of  High-Speed IO ESD, anyway:).
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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #7 - Oct 17th, 2006, 12:54pm
 
Hi SRF,

A question about the parasitics capacitance of the pad. I found that the diode Dp1 and Dn1 alone on the pad contributes a lot of parasitic capacitance that slow things down. Will the parasitics get lower if we use just the snapback devices only?

thanks,
chase.
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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #8 - Oct 17th, 2006, 3:52pm
 
The trade-off between parasitic capacitance versus ESD performance, and then adding in the arguements of diodes versus SCR/snapback based devices is old and very inconclusive.

It is inconclusive because performance of diodes/SCR's/snapback devices are very much process and design dependent, as is the parasitic capacitance.  Some processes have very good snapback performance for their standrad ggNMOS's, others do not.  Some have very good diode conductance in the high current region, other do not.  Also capacitance is as much dependent on metalization as it is on device type/device design.  There are no clear answers.

I personally subscribe to the idea that diodes can generally deliver the best ESD performance per unit capacitance.  There was also a paper which had a similar conclusions:
"C., Richier, et al., “Investigations of different ESD protection strategies devoted to 3.3V RF applications (2Ghz) in a 0.18um CMOS process,” Proc. EOS/ESD Symp., pp251-259, 2000."

I actually developed a diode for one of my clients that achieved ~60-70mA/fF of performance, under high current conditions.  (it was a ~50fF diode that could sink ~3.5A @ ~5V)
(Note this was a very aggressive diode construction that was uncoventional, you won't find it in your standard 3rd party ESD library, but is evidence of the superiority of diodes--IMHO).
I, personally, have yet to achieve similar performance using an SCR type design (someone else might know of one).  Note I would never even consider ggNMOS or gcNMOS devices for high speed applications, the drain-gate capacitance is a horrible parasitic that offers you nothing.

If you find that your diodes are excesively loading down your circuits, I would first look at your diode layouts and find ways to optimize it.
You may also need to look at your product's/SoC's ESD and IO architecture, to find ways of minimizing ESD burden on your sensitive pins.  There are many techniques to accomplish this.


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Re: ESD circuit  question?
Reply #9 - Oct 22nd, 2006, 10:50am
 
Hi SRF,

Thanks for the information.

chase
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