Usage of ESD detector circuit for analyzing soft failures in IC cores

Due to ESD events on powered ICs, soft failures can occur in the IO pad frame and in the core of the IC. A detector cell can be used to detect these faults and distinguish between valid signal changes and soft failures. A corresponding digital detector cell with adjusted switching thresholds is presented in this paper. Since the detector cell is correspondingly small (150μm × 16.5μm), it can be placed several times in the IC and read out via a scan chain.