Design of Gate-Ground-NMOS-Based ESD Protection Circuits with Low Trigger Voltage, Low Leakage Current, and Fast Turn-On

In this paper, electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuits with an advanced substrate-triggered NMOS and a gate-substrate-triggered NMOS are proposed to provide low trigger voltage, low leakage current, and fast turn-on speed. The proposed ESD protection devices are designed using 0.13 mu m CMOS technology. The experimental results show that the proposed substrate-triggered NMOS using a bipolar transistor has a low trigger voltage of 5.98 V and a fast turn-on time of 37 ns. The proposed gate-substrate-triggered NMOS has a lower trigger voltage of 5.35 V and low leakage current of 80 pA.