A Radiation-Hardened and ESD-Optimized Wireline Driver with Wide Terminal Common-Mode Voltage Range

In complex environment, the wireline voltage driver should be compatible with wide-terminal common-mode range, electrostatic discharge (ESD), and radiation interference. The most vulnerable devices in the conventional driver are the nMOS transistor and the silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) against negative the ESD shock, total dose radiation, and single-event latch-up. In this paper, a reliable wireline driver circuit is proposed compatible with-7 12-V terminal common-mode voltage range. By adopting face-to-face diodes, pMOS/n-p-n hybrid driver, and Schottky diodes, the proposed driver circuit demonstrates significant protection level improvement for both ESD and radiation. Both the reference SCR-based driver and the proposed driver with the optimized circuit design and protection strategy are fabricated using a 0.6-μm bipolar-CMOS-DMOS process. Due to a simpler circuit structure, the proposed output stage has about 10% less chip area. According to the measurement results, the human-body-model ESD level of 3 kV, total dose radiation level of 100 krad(Si), and single-event effect level of 75 MeV cm²/mg are achieved in the proposed design to satisfy complex environment applications.