Lsi Logic Corporation

Minxuan Liu

William Loh

Jau-Wen Chen

Carl A Monzel

Franklin Duan

John Q Walker

Nabil Monsour

An electrostatic discharge protection circuit adapted to reduce an electrostatic discharge event on a line of an integrated circuit. The protection circuit includes an NMOS transistor having a source contact that is electrically connected to the line. A drain contact is electrically connected to a logical low voltage, and a gate contact is also electrically connected to the logical low voltage, through a resistor. A substrate bias pump is electrically connected to a back gate of the NMOS transistor, where the bias pump provides a steady state direct current negative bias during normal operation of the integrated circuit when there is no electrostatic discharge event.

Bias for electrostatic discharge protection

A test methodology which provides that test structures, such as transistors, are arranged in a plurality of rows. A logic circuit controls which row is to be measured. An incrementer receives a triggering signal and functions as an address adder. Each time the triggering signal rises from 0 to 1, the output of the incrementer increases by 1. The output of the incrementer serves as the address input into a decoder. The decoder is connected to the rows of test structures. Preferably, each test structure contains a control circuit which is controlled by this signal (i.e., the output of the decoder). If the test structures are transistors, bias to each of the transistors can be applied separately with a common gate, source and well, and measurement can be done with a separate drain node.

Methodology to measure many more transistors on the same test area

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Minxuan Liu