An Area-Efficient Clamp Based on Transmission Gate Feedback Technology for Power Rail Electrostatic Discharge Protection

An area-efficient clamp based on transmission gate feedback technology is presented for power rail electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection. With this novel design, only a time constant of 10 ns is required for triggering and keeping the clamp turn-on during an ESD event. Full chip ESD protection with this design can endure a human body model pulse of 4500 V. Compared with the conventional clamp with the same area, the proposed clamp has 28% improvement in ESD protection capability. Simulation results show that there is no mistriggering problem caused by power-on pulse and power noise.