Area-efficient transient power-rail electrostatic discharge clamp circuit with mis-triggering immunity in a 65-nm CMOS process

A novel, area-efficient transient power-rail electrostatic discharge (ESD) clamp circuit is proposed in this work. Current-mirror capacitors are used to reduce the layout area. Logic threshold voltages of inverters are modified to ensure a fully active on-state for the clamp device in ESD conditions. The proposed circuit reduces the layout area by about 56% compared with a circuit without current-mirror capacitors. Transmission line pulse (TLP) test results based on a 65-nm CMOS process demonstrate that the proposed circuit is an efficient on-chip ESD protection scheme for this process. In addition, the proposed circuit achieves a good immunity to mis-triggering with respect to fast power-up transitions.