Operation analysis and implementation of CMOS compatible vertical bipolar ESD protection devices for automotive applications

In analysis of CMOS compatible vertical bipolar electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection, resistor avalanche breakdown in the collector region was identified as a dominant factor in ESD failure mechanism. The local high resistor has been formed near the surface because the collector electrode was fabricated with shared implantation of ultra-shallow source/drain implantation in 130 nm CMOS process. By a new collector structure alleviating the resistor avalanche breakdown, human body model (HBM) ESD specification can be successfully improved from the original 3.0 kV to 4.2 kV with sufficient latch-up immunity suitable for automotive applications.