ESD protection achieves ultra-low capacitance in tiny package

28 November 2007 Circuit & System Protection

ON Semiconductor has introduced the first member of its new, ultra-low capacitance, Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) protection family of devices. The new ESD9L is a single line ESD protection device that offers 0,5 pF capacitance and low clamping voltage. Available in the industry's smallest package for ESD protection, this part is ideal for safeguarding high speed data lines in portable applications such as cellphones, MP3 players, PDAs and digital cameras.

New generations of portable products are increasingly sensitive to damage from ESD voltage as newer IC technologies employ smaller geometries and lower working voltages. At the same time, portable electronics systems are requiring lower capacitance in order to maintain the signal integrity of their high speed data line applications. Traditional off-chip protection solutions based on silicon TVS diodes offer low ESD clamping voltage and fast response time, but their high capacitance limits their use in high speed applications. Competing off-chip protection technologies such as polymer and ceramic-based varistors offer low capacitance, but their high ESD clamping voltage limits their ability to protect the most sensitive ICs from ESD damage.

In order to overcome the limitations of traditional silicon TVS diodes, ON Semiconductor has employed a breakthrough process technology to integrate ultra-low capacitance pin diodes with high power TVS diodes into a monolithic die that can be used as a high performance off-chip ESD protection solution. This new integrated ESD protection technology platform preserves the excellent clamping and low leakage performance of traditional silicon TVS diode technology while reducing the capacitance from 50 pF to 0,5 pF. The total capacitance of 0,5 pF makes the ESD9L suitable for high-speed applications such as USB2.0 high speed (480 Mbps) and HDMI (1,65 Gbps). The ESD9L clamps an input ESD waveform of 15 kV per the IEC61000-4-2 standard, to less than 7 V in a matter of nanoseconds.

ON Semiconductor's integrated ESD protection platform uses proprietary design techniques to enhance clamping performance while maintaining a small die size enabling it to fit in a SOD-923 package measuring just 1,0 mm x 0,6 mm x 0,4 mm.

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