The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 28, 2002
Filed:
Nov. 20, 2000
Ciaran J. Brennan, Essex Junction, VT (US);
Douglas B. Hershberger, Essex Junction, VT (US);
Mankoo Lee, Essex Junction, VT (US);
Nicholas T. Schmidt, Colchester, VT (US);
Steven H. Voldman, South Burlington, VT (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A silicon-germanium ESD element comprises a substrate of a first dopant type coupled to a first voltage terminal and a first diode-configured element. The first diode-configured element has a collector region of a second dopant type in the substrate, a SiGe base layer of the first dopant type on the collector region, with the SiGe base layer including a base contact region, and an emitter of the second dopant type on the SiGe base layer. Preferably, the SiGe base layer ion the collector region is an epitaxial SiGe layer and the second dopant type of the emitter is diffused in to the SiGe base layer. The ESD element of the present invention may further include a second diode-configured element of the same structure as the first diode-configured element, with an isolation region in the substrate separating the first and second diode-configured elements. The first and second diode-configured elements form a diode network. In each of the embodiments, the isolation regions may be disposed adjacent the collector regions of the diode elements and below a portion of the SiGe base layer of the diode elements. The SiGe base layer in the diode elements preferably comprises an active, single crystal layer in a portion directly over the collector region and a polycrystalline layer in portions directly over the isolation regions. The isolation regions may be shallow or deep trench isolations.