柯明道

Nanoscale CMOS technologies have been widely used to implement radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits. However, the thinner gate oxide and silicided drain/source in nanoscale CMOS technologies seriously degraded the electrostatic discharge (ESD) robustness of RF circuits. Against ESD damage, an on-chip ESD protection design must be included in the RF circuits. As the RF … [Read more...] about Design of compact ESD protection circuit for V-band RF applications in a 65-nm CMOS technology

Safe operating area (SOA) in power semiconductors is one of the most important factors affecting device reliability. The SOA region of power MOSFETs must be well characterized for using in circuit design to meet the specification of applications, particularly including the time domain of circuit operations. In this paper, the characterization of SOA in the time domain is … [Read more...] about Characterization of SOA in time domain and the improvement techniques for using in high-voltage integrated circuits

To meet the desired electrostatic discharge (ESD) robustness, ESD diodes was added into the I/O cells of integrated circuits (ICs). However, the parasitic capacitance from the ESD diodes often caused degradation on circuit performance, especially in the high-speed I/O applications. In this work, two modified layout styles to effectively improve the figures of merits (FOMs) of … [Read more...] about Study of intrinsic characteristics of ESD protection diodes for high-speed I/O applications

Diode-triggeredsilicon-controlled rectifiers(DTSCRs) are used for on-chip electrostatic discharge protection. The role of the trigger diode string in determining the transient voltage overshoot is investigated using a very fast transmission line pulse. A DTSCR containing only poly-bound trigger diodes has a voltage overshoot of just 1.5 V at 7 A, which is significantly less … [Read more...] about Diode-triggered silicon-controlled rectifier with reduced voltage overshoot for CDM ESD protection

To effectively protect the radio-frequency (RF) circuits in nanoscale CMOS technology from electrostatic discharge (ESD) damages, the silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) devices have been used as main on-chip ESD protection devices due to their high ESD robustness and low parasitic capacitance. In this paper, an SCR device assisted with an inductor is proposed to improve the … [Read more...] about ESD protection design for 60-GHz LNA with inductor-triggered SCR in 65-nm CMOS process