Novel Integrated Low Capacitance Transient Voltage Suppressor Array with Capacitance Equalization Technique for System-Level EOS/ESD Protection

This paper proposed a novel integrated low capacitance transient voltage suppressor (ILC-TVS) for system-level Electrical Over Stress or Electro-Static discharge (EOS or ESD) protection. Compared with the regular TVS, the new one can be fabricated using standard bipolar technology and also possesses the good system-level ESD robustness. By a newly-proposed anode extension technology (AET), the input common-mode capacitance at "0 bias" state is suppressed from 0.78 pF down to 0.65 pF, which realizes the smoother capacitance curve with bias voltage increasing from 0~5 V. According to the standard EOS/ESD tests, the novel ILC-TVS gets the IEC 61000-4-5 EOS peak current (I
_PP
) of 5.26 A and endures the IEC 61000-4-2 contact mode ESD stress of ± 11 kV. Therefore, the ILC-TVS can provide robust ESD protection for high-speed data interface by on-chip or off-chip design.