ESD protection circuit with scalable current capacity and voltage capacity
AssigneeATMEL Germany GmbH
InventorsVolker Dudek, Michael Graf, Peter Grombach, Manfred Klaussner
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An ESD protection circuit includes semiconductor structures as basic elements whose electrical conductivity changes in a breakdown or avalanche manner in the presence of an applied voltage which exceeds a threshold value. The ESD protection circuit has a matrix of basic elements in which a desired current capacity can be set by specifying a number of basic elements in each row, and a desired voltage capacity can be set by specifying a number of rows.
Claims10
An ESD protection circuit having semiconductor structures as basic elements whose electrical conductivity changes in a breakdown or avalanche manner when an applied voltage exceeds a threshold value, the ESD protection circuit having a matrix of basic elements in which a desired current capacity is set by specifying a number of basic elements in each row of the matrix, and a desired voltage capacity is set by specifying a number of rows of the matrix.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.