Design of High-Voltage-Tolerant Power-Rail ESD Clamp Circuit in Low-Voltage CMOS Processes

A new high-voltage-tolerant power-rail electrostatic discharge (ESD) clamp circuit with a special ESD detection circuit realized with only 1timesVDD devices for 3timesVDD-tolerant mixed-voltage I/O interfaces is proposed. The proposed power-rail ESD clamp circuit with excellent ESD protection effectiveness has been verified in a 0.13-mum CMOS process with only 1.2-V devices.