Study On The Protection Mechanism And Performance Of Filmy Polymer ESD Suppressor

Nowadays, becoming increasingly integrated, miniaturized and low power-consumed, integrated circuits(ICs) have been widely used in many fields. In corresponding to this tendency, the microelectronic devices and chips’ capacity of withstanding electrostatic discharge(ESD) are continuously declined. As a kind of common near field electromagnetic hazard, ESD has brought in more severe direct and indirect harms. This fact has become an important problem urgently to be solved in the present electronics industry. Therefore, the study of response characteristics of ESD protection devices under the effect of ESD has important practical value and practical significance. And great attention has been paid on various kinds of ESD protection devices and protection elements. Based on the status quo that they have shortcomings, a type of filmy polymer ESD suppressor was chosen as the research object in this article. From the aspects of theory and experiments, its ESD protection mechanism and performance has been researched. The main contents are as follows:1. The ESD protection mechanism namely nonlinear volt-ampere characteristic of this filmy polymer ESD suppressor was researched. And the research was focused on the study of its inherent reason or conductive mechanism. The production and composition rules of the non-equilibrium carriers, the carriers’ transport rules and current continuity equation were obtained, and correlated them with the working principle and protection performance parameters of the device.The theoretical research indicated that under extra excitation source, the concentration of nonequilibrium carriers would be changed significantly, making the device conduct electricity. The concentration of carriers affected its complex process, and decided the nonlinear volt-ampere characteristics of the device. Performance evaluation of this device should select leakage current, insulation resistance, conduction resistance, response time, trigger voltage, clamping voltage and other related parameters.2. Typical ESD models and time-frequency characteristics of pulse source’s waveforms were researched. By contrastive analysis of these models’ characteristics, the test model adopted for test method of the ESD protection performance was eventually identified.The analysis showed that Transmission Line Pulse(TLP) model has obvious advantages and could be associated with other ESD models and equaled. Therefore, TLP model was selected for the measurements of protection performance.3. A transmission line pulse measurement system was established to carry out experimental research on the ESD protection performance of this filmy polymer ESD suppressor. Based on the characteristics of inner carriers, measurements were concentrated on the important parameters of ESD protection performance. Effect of parameters of the device itself on ESD protection performance was also studied.The experimental results showed that this filmy polymer ESD suppressor has a high insulation resistance, small leakage currents and capacitance. When applied high injection voltages, it could conduct well, and the turn-on resistance was small. Its ESD protection effect was good and tended to be stable. With the increasement of thickness, capacitance, trigger voltage, peak voltage, clamping voltage and clamping time of this device would present an increasing trend. Although its performance still had some disadvantages, this ESD suppressor could be used for electrostatic protection in a certain range.