Improving the Electrostatic Discharge Robustness of a Junction Barrier Schottky Diode Using an Embedded p-n-p BJT

The high-voltage (H-V) junction barrier Schottky (JBS) diode is often incorporated into the input or output of H-V integrated circuits. When the chip is connected to the external environment, it inevitably suffers electrostatic discharge (ESD) stress. However, the JBS diode can only withstand the forward-mode ESD but it is highly vulnerable to reverse-mode ESD. In this letter, a new kind of JBS diode that is incorporated with a p-n-p bipolar is developed. The experimental results demonstrated that the new device can improve the failure threshold voltages of the human body mode and machine mode by at least four times. The area increase for the new device is 2.2%.