Augmented DTSCR With Fast Turn-On Speed for Nanoscale ESD Protection Applications

In this brief, two novel diode-triggered silicon-controlled rectifiers (DTSCRs) with fast turn-on speed have been presented. By embedding current gain amplifier modules (i.e., Sziklai pair and Darlington pair) into the conventional DTSCR, the current gain of parasitic bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) on the silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) path in the new devices becomes much larger than that of the conventional counterpart, thus resulting in a faster turn-on speed and better quasi-static
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characteristics. As such, the quasi-static triggering characteristic of the new DTSCR improves by 80%, and the turn-on speed improves by 42%–93% for different current levels.