Electrostatic Discharge Protection in the Nano-Technology - Will We be able to Provide ESD Protection in the Future?

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) phenomenon will play a critical role in the introduction, manufacturing and implementation of present day semiconductor devices and future nano-structures as presented by Voldman (2002). In the future, the ability to produce nanostructures may be limited by the ESD sensitivity of these electronic and mechanical elements. The ESD technology roadmap has been shown, highlighting a decreasing ESD robustness with technology scaling. ESD technology scaling issues in advanced CMOS, RF CMOS, silicon germanium, to gallium arsenide will be reviewed. ESD issues from wafer-level charging, on-chip protection, to off-chip protection have been discussed. In addition trends in RF MEMs, FINFETs, magnetic recording, photo-masks to carbon nano-tubes (CNT) have been discussed.