Compact ESD Protection Cell for Multi-Band Millimeter-Wave Applications

A compact electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection cell is proposed for multi-band millimeter-wave (MMW) circuits in nanoscale CMOS technology. The proposed ESD protection cell consists of a silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) and a diode as the main ESD protection devices, and an inductor in this cell is divided into several sections to resonate at multifrequencies. The proposed design has been demonstrated for 28- and 67-GHz applications. The measurement results show that the proposed design exhibits lower loss at the specified frequency bands, higher ESD robustness, and sufficiently small layout area. Therefore, the novel compact ESD protection cell will be better for multi-band MMW applications in CMOS technology.