ESD - A PERVASIVE RELIABILITY CONCERN FOR IC TECHNOLOGIES

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is considered a major reliability threat to integrated circuit (IC) technologies. A review of the ESD phenomen a along with the test methods, the appropriate on-chip protection tech niques, and the impact of process technology advances from CMOS to BiC MOS on the ESD sensitivity of IC protection circuits, are presented. T he present status of understanding the ESD failure physics and the cur rent approaches for modeling are also discussed This overview paper de als with several aspects of ESD from the point of view of the test, de sign, product, and reliability engineers.