TY - JOUR
T1 - Investigation and application of vertical NPN devices for RF ESD protection in BiCMOS technology
AU - Huang, Guo Lun
AU - Fu, Wei Hao
AU - Lin, Chun Yu
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by Amazing Microelectronic Corp. , Taiwan, and by Ministry of Science and Technology , Taiwan, under contract MOST 105-2622-E-003-001-CC2 . The authors would like to thank National Chip Implementation Center (CIC), Taiwan, for the support of chip fabrication. The authors would like to thank Prof. Ming-Dou Ker and his research group in National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, for their great help during measurement.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by Amazing Microelectronic Corp., Taiwan, and by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under contract MOST 105-2622-E-003-001-CC2. The authors would like to thank National Chip Implementation Center (CIC), Taiwan, for the support of chip fabrication. The authors would like to thank Prof. Ming-Dou Ker and his research group in National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, for their great help during measurement.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/4
Y1 - 2018/4
N2 - BiCMOS technologies have been used to implement the radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits (ICs) due to the advantages of low noise, low power consumption, high drive, and high speed. The electrostatic discharge (ESD) is one of the important reliability issues of IC. When the ESD events happen, the ESD protection devices must be turned on immediately to protect the ICs, including the RF ICs in BiCMOS technologies. In this work, the vertical NPN (VNPN) devices in 0.18 μm silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technology with base-emitter shorted and resistor trigger approaches are investigated. In component-level, using transmission-line-pulsing (TLP) and ESD simulator test the I–V characteristics and human-body-model (HBM) robustness of the VNPN devices, respectively. In system-level, using ESD gun tests the system-level ESD robustness. The ESD protection of VNPN devices are further applied to a 2.4 GHz low-noise amplifier (LNA). After attaching the VNPN devices to LNA, the RF characteristics are not degraded while the ESD robustness can be much improved.
AB - BiCMOS technologies have been used to implement the radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits (ICs) due to the advantages of low noise, low power consumption, high drive, and high speed. The electrostatic discharge (ESD) is one of the important reliability issues of IC. When the ESD events happen, the ESD protection devices must be turned on immediately to protect the ICs, including the RF ICs in BiCMOS technologies. In this work, the vertical NPN (VNPN) devices in 0.18 μm silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technology with base-emitter shorted and resistor trigger approaches are investigated. In component-level, using transmission-line-pulsing (TLP) and ESD simulator test the I–V characteristics and human-body-model (HBM) robustness of the VNPN devices, respectively. In system-level, using ESD gun tests the system-level ESD robustness. The ESD protection of VNPN devices are further applied to a 2.4 GHz low-noise amplifier (LNA). After attaching the VNPN devices to LNA, the RF characteristics are not degraded while the ESD robustness can be much improved.
KW - BiCMOS technology
KW - Electrostatic discharge (ESD)
KW - Low-noise amplifier (LNA)
KW - Radio-frequency (RF)
KW - Vertical NPN (VNPN)
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U2 - 10.1016/j.microrel.2017.06.068
DO - 10.1016/j.microrel.2017.06.068
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85021759741
SN - 0026-2714
VL - 83
SP - 271
EP - 280
JO - Microelectronics Reliability
JF - Microelectronics Reliability
ER -