Novel drain-less multi-gate pHEMT for electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection in GaAs technology

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection structures in GaAs HEMT technology are commonly constructed using either stacked Schottky diode or Single-Gate clamp. Dual-gate pHEMT clamp was also recently reported for its better ESD robustness performance. This paper further develops an improved ESD protection clamp based on a novel drainless, multi-gate pHEMT in 0.5um GaAs pHEMT technology. With similar layout area, the proposed ESD protection clamp can carry much higher current handling ability (5.2-A “It2”, roughly 7.8-kV HBM ESD level) than both the conventional single-gate pHEMT clamp and recently reported dual-gate pHEMT clamp under the human body model (HBM) stress.