ESD Protection for Poly Fuses

Abstract

Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) can falsely program or erase the poly fuse cell even with a standard ESD protection device in parallel. In this study, special ESD protection circuits including phase change disabling circuits are successfully introduced. It is demonstrated that those can prevent the poly fuse from ESD damage by blocking ESD currents from the highly sensitive poly fuse. So, these circuits are required to allow for a protection of poly fuses despite of their extremely low ESD damage voltage of about 2–3V.