Uncalibrated TCAD methodology for analysis of ESD protection devices

In this work, an uncalibrated TCAD methodology for simulation of electrostatic discharge (ESD) devices is presented. The methodology addresses TCAD setup issues including device construction, boundary conditions, and choosing a physical model and parameters. A major trade-off between computation complexity and accuracy, 2D vs. 3D simulations, is examined in detail. TCAD simulation results for the GGNMOS in 32 nm CMOS technology is compared with published measurement results for methodology validation. The established TCAD methodology is then applied to ESD protection silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) devices to identify physical causes for high overshoot of a certain SCR layout, and to verify proposed improvements. The performance of the SCR with the improved layout structure is characterized in silicon to prove its consistency with TCAD prediction