High-Q electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection devices for use at radio frequency (RF) and broad-band I/O pins

Radio frequency and broad-band I/O circuit designers may compensate for the capacitance of electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection elements by designing them into tuned resonators or matched filters, thereby requiring that the protection device capacitance have a high quality factor (Q). In this paper, we explore several ESD protection device options, focusing on improvement in Q. We show that surrounding a grounded-gate nMOS transistor with a deep trench increases its Q, while adding a trigger circuit decreases it. We also show that SiGe diodes are preferred over SiGe n-p-n devices. A detailed analysis of experimental results is provided.