Understanding the Failure Mechanisms of Protection Diodes During System Level ESD: Toward Repetitive Stresses Robustness

In electronic systems, the ever-increasing level of integration is paced by component scaling. Consequently, system-level protection improvements in electrostatic discharge (ESD) reliability during a device's lifetime are mandatory. To this end, we have investigated bidirectional system-level ESD protection diodes that have been subjected to repetitive human metal model stresses. Our goal was to d...