Bipolar design considerations for the automotive environment

In view of the detrimental voltage transients associated with the automotive environment, and the advantages and limitations of the present bipolar integrated circuits with respect to this environment, new bipolar circuit and device innovations have been specifically developed to economically protect the IC from these destructive transients and improve the IC´s functional performance. Many of these techniques prevent the negative voltage transients from injecting electrons into the P-type substrate, insuring that a newly defined parasitic lateral n-p-n transistor cannot degrade the performance of the IC. New and effective high-frequency input filtering techniques were also devised on the chip to prevent the high-frequency voltage transients from gaining access to the IC circuitry, especially at the logic inputs.