A Modified RC and Diode Co-Triggered ESD Clamp Circuit

This paper presents a new ESD clamp circuit which is co-triggered by RC and diode. It is immune to the false triggering caused by fast power-up events due to the diode detection mechanism. With the addition of a common source amplifier, the detection signal is enhanced, and the clamp device is turned on more quickly. The proposed circuit is designed in a 0.18 µm 1.8-V CMOS process and verified by numerical simulation. The characteristics and improvements of the new circuit are discussed.