ESD Protection Design for Open-Drain Power Amplifier in CMOS Technology

The on-chip electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection device for radio-frequency (RF) power amplifier (PA) with open-drain structure is studied in this work. The conventional ESD protection device of stacked diodes and the proposed ESD protection device of stacked diodes with embedded silicon-controlled rectifiers (SCRs) are compared in silicon and applied to the 2.4GHz PAs. The proposed ESD protection device has the advantages including higher ESD-current-handling ability, lower ESD-clamping voltage, and sufficiently low parasitic capacitance. Besides, the proposed ESD protection device does not degrade the PA performances. Therefore, the proposed ESD protection device of stacked diodes with embedded SCRs is more suitable for CMOS PAs.