| Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is a serious reliability concern. It causes approximately 25% of all field failures of integrated circuits (ICs). Inevitably, future IC technologies will shrink the dimensions of interconnects, gate oxides, and junction depths, causing ICs to be increasingly susceptible to ESD-induced damage.; In this thesis, we provide a lengthy discussion of pulsed measurement techniques for characterizing ESD protection devices. These techniques are invaluable in understanding device behavior under ESD conditions. High instantaneous power levels of short duration exclude traditional dc and ac characterization methods.; The impact of stored-charge effects in ESD diodes employed in ESD protection circuits has not been addressed in the literature. We have subjected ESD protection diodes to VFTLP pulses to evaluate the importance of incorporating stored-charge effects into circuit simulation models. A discussion of the topic and our results is presented.; We also investigated LVTSCR structures fabricated in a commercial CMOS technology, including measuring the turn-on time of LVTSCR ESD protection devices. A circuit simulation macromodel for use in circuit simulation tools has also been incorporated into the Illinois Electrothermal Simulator (iETSIM). A complete discussion of SCRs as ESD protection devices and our measurement/modeling work is given herein. |
