• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2009

The holding voltage of high-voltage devices under the snapback breakdown condition has been known to be much smaller than the operating voltage. Such characteristics cause high-voltage ICs to be susceptible to the transient latch-up failure in the practical system applications, especially when these devices are used as the ESD(ElectroStatic Discharge) power clamp circuit. A new latchup-free design of the ESD power clamp circuit with stacked-bipolar devices is proposed and successfully verified in a $0.35{\mu}m$ 3.3V/60V BCD(Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) process to achieve the desired ESD level. The total holding voltage of the stacked-bipolar devices in the snapback breakdown condition can be larger than the operating voltage. Proposed power clamp operates safely because of the high holding voltage. From the measurement on the devices fabricated using a $0.35{\mu}m$ BCD Process, it was observed that the proposed ESD power clamp can provide 800% higher ESD robustness per silicon area as compared to the conventional clamps with a high-voltage diode.