2004•Unpublished venueRequires access
RF characterization of ESD protection structures [RFIC applications]
Guang Chen, Haigang Feng, Haolu Xie, Rouying Zhan, Qiong Wu, Xiaokang Guan, A. Wang, K. Takasuka, S. Tamura, Zhihua Wang, Chun Zhang
Open publisher page 2 citations
Abstract
ESD (electrostatic discharge) protection design for RF ICs is a challenging design problem. This paper reports a comprehensive RF characterization of various RF ESD protection structures, including S-parameters, parasitic capacitance and resistance. It is found that a dual-direction SCR type ESD protection structure is the best RF ESD protection solution and an optimized two/three-diode string is an attractive solution as well. A new optimization parameter, F-factor, is introduced to evaluate the overall performance of RF ESD protection structures. A dual-SCR structure of 257 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ for 2 kV ESD protection features 43.2 fF parasitic capacitance at 2.4 GHz and F=180. This work is conducted using a commercial 0.35 /spl mu/m BiCMOS technology.