Institute of Microelectronics

Mark Hatzilambrou

Chester Leung

Bo Yu

My The Doan

Rajan Walia

Yin Qian

Eric Johnson

Lien Wee Liang

Subhash C Rustagi

M K Radhakrishnan

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection for circuits which utilize multiple power supply rails, both positive (Vdd) and negative (Vss). Vdd busses remain completely isolated, while Vss busses are joined by pairs of complementary polarity diodes (made typically with P&plus;/N-well diodes in an N/P-substrate process) thus keeping Vss busses isolated from each other. The I/O diodes of high frequency I/O pads are arranged in a square layout to achieve the best current/capacitance ratio. Each pair of power rails is provided with its own power shunt circuit, placing each shunt in physical proximity to the I/O pad it must protect. Shunts are designed to clamp at a very low voltage during an ESD event using mostly PMOS transistors. The protection circuit is laid out such that the worst case ESD event will flow at most between two I/O pads and one power shunt.

ESD protection system for high frequency applications

A method of integrated circuit component integration in copper interconnects, including the following steps of the first embodiment. A wafer is provided having an exposed top-most planar copper interconnect. The wafer being divided into one or more areas selected from the group consisting of: a spiral inductor area having an exposed planar copper interconnect bottom half of a stacked spiral inductor; a MIM capacitor area having an exposed planar copper interconnect bottom plate and an exposed planar copper interconnect contact point of a MIM capacitor; and a precision resistor area having a two exposed planar copper interconnect routing points of a precision resistor. A spiral inductor is formed within the spiral inductor area; a MIM capacitor is formed within the MIM capacitor area; and a precision resistor is formed within the precision resistor area.

Single damascene method for RF IC passive component integration in copper interconnect process

Growing community of inventors

La Canada, CA, United States of America

Mark Hatzilambrou