Best Practices for Using Electrostatic Discharge Protection Techniques for Single-Event Transient Mitigation

Abstract

We provide "best practices" for single-event transient (SET) mitigation using electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection techniques. We investigate the correlation between SET suppression and RF performance when ESD protection circuits for SET mitigation are combined with various RF switches. The three different single-pole single-throw (SPST) switch configurations (conventional design, floating body, and floating body/n-well) were implemented to provide insight on how to best apply dc ESD protection techniques for also achieving robust SET mitigation. Based on two-photon absorption laser experiments and RF measurements, a conventional SPST switch configuration shows relatively poor RF performance but is effective for SET mitigation due to the SET discharge current path provided by ESD protection circuit. On the other hand, the combination of the SPST switch and the ESD circuit, which exhibits the best RF performance among the three configurations, is relatively vulnerable to SETs. Based on these results, strategies and methodologies for ESD protection techniques to effectively mitigate SET are proposed.