Analyzing the switching behavior of ESD-protection transistors by very fast transmission line pulsing

This work describes, how the very fast transmission line pulsing (VFTLP)-te chnique can be used to characterize the switching behavior of ESD protectio n elements. In a first application we investigate the behavior of a protect ion element consisting of a lateral and vertical transistor part. This elem ent shows a good ESD performance under 100 ns-TLP and HEM conditions. Under CDM relevant conditions, however, we could identify by means of VFTLP a de layed triggering of the vertical transistor part, which leads to an increas ed maximum voltage and thus to a low-failure threshold. In the second appli cation we propose a methodology for the extraction of the base transit time parameter which improves the accuracy of a compact transistor model during turn on. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.