NiCr fuse reliability-a new approach

Abstract

Presents one technique to apply concurrent engineering in the development of a reliable fuse element in CMOS PROMs. The development required both a new circuit and process design. The five stages presented were used to produce a reliable fuse element that is also manufacturable. The use of these techniques uncovered several limitations in the circuit early enough in the development to be corrected. One reported in this paper was the poor current gain of the fusing bipolar transistor.