A Novel Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Protection Circuit in D-Mode pHEMT Technology

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection structures in the D-Mode GaAs HEMT technology are commonly constructed using either stacked Schottky diode or Single-Gate clamp. This paper develops an improved ESD protection clamp based on a novel multi-gate pHEMT in D-Mode technology. With similar layout area, the proposed ESD protection clamp can carry much higher current than the conventional single-gate pHEMT clamp under the human body model (HBM) stress.