Investigation of Frequency Models to Predict Dynamic Behavior of ESD Protection Networks

With the shrinking dimension of technologies and safety requirements, electrostatic discharge (ESD) protections play a more and more important role. Consequently, the prediction of the transient behavior's protection network is becoming difficult for system level designers in order to guarantee systems safety. A model reproducing the turn-
on
behavior is needed to obtain a precise simulation's protection strategy network, especially during the protection triggering. In this article, we propose a complete measurement and computation setup to access an equivalent frequency model of devices under strong pulse injections for a rapid model construction. Details of the measurement and data computation to obtain a frequency model using a transmission line pulse generator combined with time-domain reflectometry measurement will be provided. To validate our proposed frequency model, a comparison between the measurements and simulations is first performed on passive and linear components, and then on two protection devices (transient voltage suppressor). A simulation on a protection network, at the board level, will show that the combination of the frequency models could be done to predict its response to ESD pulse with an acceptable precision, without the tedious step of component modeling.