Substrate triggering and salicide effects on ESD performance and protection circuit design in deep submicron CMOS processes

The effect of salicides and the influence of the local substrate potential on ESD performance of deep submicron nMOS transistors have been studied. It is shown that salicidation causes a strong dependence of ESD performance on effective channel length in these devices. Salicides also impact the behavior of the lateral npn parasitic bipolar transistor by affecting the emitter efficiency. A higher local substrate potential has been shown to have a positive impact on ESD performance. Based on these results we have designed and demonstrated a substrate triggered nMOS protection circuit which provides >2 kV ESD performance in a fully salicided process.