The Investigation of Electrothermal Characteristics of High-Voltage Lateral IGBT for ESD Protection

In this paper, the detailed characterizations of the lateral insulated-gate bipolar transistor (LIGBT) for the electro- static discharge (ESD) protection of power ICs are presented. Compared with the conventional lateral DMOS with the same structure except for the anode doping type, the LIGBT shows lower triggering voltage, faster voltage-clamping speed, and much higher ESD robustness. Experimental results demonstrate that the LIGBT with runway layout achieves excellent thermal breakdown current of more than 10 A with 250-μm device width. The high ESD performance enables the LIGBT to be used as a promising ESD protection device in the power ICs.