Silicon Integrated Systems Corporation

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp. Ltd.

Wen-Yu Lo

Ming-Dou Ker

Ching-Yun Chu

Wei Feng Lin

Hsin-Chyh Hsu

Wen-Dong Yen

Chung Ju Wu

Che-Hao Chuang

Hun-Hsien Chang

Kuo-Chun Hsu

Cheng-Ming Lee

Chien-Hui Chuang

A method of manufacturing a semiconductor device having a first and second transistor of an ESD protection and internal circuit respectively. The method includes the steps of providing a substrate, forming gates of the first and second transistor on the substrate, depositing a mask layer and patterning the mask layer using one single mask to remove the mask layer on the gates, a portion of a drain region of the first transistor, and a source and drain region of the second transistor, implementing ESD implantation under the regions without the patterned mask layer, removing the mask layer and forming sidewall spacers of the gates, and implementing drain diffusion.

Method of manufacturing an ESD protection device with the same mask for both LDD and ESD implantation

A substrate used in a semiconductor device. The substrate includes a first wiring layer, a second wiring layer, and an interconnection-wiring layer. The first wiring layer includes a plurality of first pads, and the second wiring layer includes a plurality of second pads. The interconnection-wiring layer is set between the first and second wiring layer. In this case, at least one of the second pads that does not electrically connect to anyone of the first pads electrically connects to the interconnection-wiring layer. In another case, a shielding portion, which electrically connects the interconnection-wiring layer, is provided around the second pad that doesn't electrically connect to anyone of the first pads. Furthermore, this invention also discloses a semiconductor device including the substrate.

Semiconductor devices and substrates used in thereof

An electrostatic discharge protection circuit. The electrostatic discharge (ESD) circuit utilizes inductors and resistors added to sources of multiple fingers of the NMOS transistor, which is triggered by some feedback circuit uniformly. When under an ESD zapping, a finger MOS transistor is trigger initially to snapback region owing to its layout or other causes, a voltage drop across the inductor or the resistor connected to the source of the finger MOS transistor is occurred and presented to gates of the other finger MOS transistors by the feedback circuit. Thus, the other finger MOS transistors are turned on.

Uniform turn-on design on multiple-finger MOSFET for ESD protection application

An ESD protection circuit with tunable gate-bias coupled between a first and second pads for receiving power supply voltages. The ESD protection circuit includes a diode, a resistor coupled between the cathode of the diode and the first pad, a capacitor coupled between the cathode of the diode and the second pad, a first transistor of a first conductivity type having a gate coupled to the cathode of the diode, a drain coupled to the anode of the diode and a source coupled to the second pad, a second transistor of a second conductivity type having a gate coupled to the cathode of the diode, a drain coupled to the anode of the diode and a source coupled to the first pad, and a third transistor of the first conductivity type having a gate coupled to the anode of the diode, a drain coupled to the first pad and a source coupled to the second pad.

ESD protection circuit with tunable gate-bias

An low-voltage triggered PNP device for input signals with voltage level larger than VDD or less than VSS. The ESD protection device provides an ESD path from a first to a second node for protection of an internal circuit. The device comprises a substrate of a first conductivity type coupled to the first node, a first doped region of a second conductivity type in the substrate, wherein the first doped region is floated, a second doped region of the first conductivity type in the first doped region coupled to the second node, and a third doped region in the substrate, adjacent to the first doped region, to have a low trigger voltage.

Low-voltage triggered PNP for ESD protection in mixed voltage I/O interface

A subtractor is connected between a p-channel bandgap reference unit and an n-channel bandgap reference unit. The subtractor includes two NPN transistors connected to the p-channel bandgap reference unit, and two PNP transistors connected to the n-channel bandgap reference unit. The subtractor takes the difference of the two currents produced by the p-channel and n-channel bandgap reference units and generates a temperature insensitive and curvature-compensated reference voltage of less than one volt across an output resistor.

Low-voltage curvature-compensated bandgap reference

The present invention relates to a device for protecting high frequency RF integrated circuits from ESD damage. The device comprises at least one varactor-LC circuit tank stacked to avoid the power gain loss by the parasitic capacitance of ESD circuit. The varactor-LC tank could be designed to resonate at the RF operating frequency to avoid the power gain loss from the parasitic capacitance of ESD circuit. Multiple LC-tanks could be stacked for further reduction in the power gain loss. A reverse-biased diode is used as the varactor for both purposes of impedance matching and effective ESD current discharging. Because the inductor is made of metal, both the inductor and the varactor can discharge ESD current when ESD condition happens. It has a high enough ESD level to prevent ESD discharge.

Electrostatic discharge protection device for giga-hertz radio frequency integrated circuits with varactor-LC tanks

Voltage dividing resistors (R, R, R, R) are connected in parallel with diode connected bipolar transistors (Q, Q) for splitting the voltage to the inputs of an operational amplifier (). Current is provided to this arrangement by current sources (I, I). When the supply voltage is about 0.85 volts, a temperature insensitive reference voltage of about 200 millivolts is available at the drain of a second transistor (M, M).

Low-voltage bandgap reference

A substrate used in a semiconductor device. The substrate includes a first wiring layer, a second wiring layer, and an interconnection-wiring layer. The first wiring layer includes a plurality of first pads while the second wiring layer includes a plurality of second pads. The interconnection-wiring layer is set between the first and second wiring layer. In this case, at least one of the second pads isn't electrically connected with anyone of the first pads, and other second pads that located adjacent to this second pad, which is not electrically connected with the first pads, electrically connect to the interconnection-wiring layer. Furthermore, this invention also discloses a semiconductor device including the substrate.

Substrates for semiconductor devices with shielding for NC contacts

An electrostatic discharge protection circuit. The electrostatic discharge protection circuit utilizes the non-uniform triggering of multi-finger gate-grounded NMOS. The source of the finger which has the potential to trigger on is coupled to the base terminal of all the parasitic bipolar transistor of all the other multi-finger gate-ground NMOS structures. Thus, the finger which has the potential to be triggered can be used as a triggering device to trigger the other finger devices during an ESD event. By using this method, the ESD protection NMOS or PMOS, realized with multi-finger layout structure, can be uniformally triggered on to discharge ESD current. Therefore, it can have a high ESD robustness in a small layout area.

ESD protection circuit with self-triggered technique

A diode string with very low leakage current is used in power supply ESD clamp circuits. By adding an CMOS-Controlled Lateral SCR device into the cascaded diode string, the leakage current of this new diode string with 6 cascaded diodes under 5 Volts (3.3 Volts) forward bias can be controlled below 2.1 (1.07) nA at a temperature of 125&deg; C. in a 0.35 &mgr;m silicide CMOS process. The holding voltage of this design with the CMOS-Controlled Lateral SCR can be linearly adjusted by changing the number of the cascaded diodes in the diode string for the application among the power lines with different voltage levels. The ESD level of this ESD clamp circuit is greater than 8,000 Volts in the Human-Body-Model ESD test. The diodes string is suitable for portable or low-power CMOS Integrated Circuit (IC) devices.

Low-leakage diode string for use in the power-rail ESD clamp circuits

An ESD protection circuit for Mixed-Voltage I/O by using stacked NMOS transistors with substrate triggering technique is disclosed. The ESD protection circuit contains a set of stacked NMOS transistors with a first NMOS transistor and a second NMOS transistor, a parasitic lateral bipolar transistor, a substrate current generating circuit, and a parasitic substrate resistor. The drain of the first NMOS transistor connects to an I/O pad. The gate of the first NMOS transistor connects to a first working voltage. The source of the first NMOS transistor connects to the drain of the second NMOS transistor. The gate of the second NMOS transistor connects to an internal circuit. The source of the second NMOS transistor connects to a second working voltage. The collector of the parasitic lateral bipolar transistor connects to the drain of the first NMOS transistor and its emitter connects to the source of the second NMOS transistor. A first terminal of the substrate current generating circuit connects to the I/O pad, a second terminal connects to the second working voltage, and a third terminal connects to the substrate of the lateral bipolar transistor, so that a triggering current is sent out of the third terminal when the voltage at the I/O pad is over a predetermined value. One end of the parasitic substrate resistor connects to the base of the bipolar transistor and the other end connects to the second working voltage, using the triggering current to generate a bias for the bipolar transistor. During ESD-stress condition, such ESD protection circuit can be quickly triggered on to discharge ESD current. During IC normal circuit operating condition, such ESD protection circuit is kept off.

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Taichung, Taiwan

Wen-Yu Lo