In the seven years since the first edition of this book was completed, Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) phenomena in integrated circuits (IC) continues to be important as technologies shrink and the speed and size of the chips increases. The phenomena related to ESD events in semiconductor devices take place outside the realm of normal device operation. Hence, the physics governing this behavior are not typically found in general textbooks on semiconductors. Similarly the circuit design issues involve nonstandard approaches that are not covered in general books on electronic design. There has been a large amount of work done in the areas of ESD circuit design and the physics involved, most of which has been published in a number of papers and conference proceedings. This book covers the stateof-the-art in circuit design for ESD prevention as well as the device physics, test methods, and characterization. We also include case studies showing examples of approaches to solving ESD design problems.

For the second edition, we have completely revised a number of chapters and brought other chapters up to date with the latest learning. The last seven years have seen many developments in the understanding of ESD phenomenon and the issues related to circuit and transistor design, as well as to modeling and simulation.

The book is intended for those working in the field of IC circuit design and transistor device design. In addition, the basics presented in this book should also appeal to graduate students in the field of semiconductor reliability and device/circuit modeling.

As the problems associated with ESD become significant in the IC industry the demand for graduates with a basic knowledge of ESD phenomena also increases.

We hope that this book will help students meet the demands of the IC industry in terms of understanding and approaching ESD problems in semiconductor devices.

There are many companies and research institutes that have made it possible to understand and solve the majority of ESD problems in ICs. Some of the companies that have been particularly active in recent years are Texas Instruments, Philips Semiconductors, Lucent, Rockwell, IBM, Motorola, DEC/Compaq, David Sarnoff Labs, and Intel. Research Institutes that have made significant contributions in recent years are Sandia National Labs, Clemson University, Stanford University, the University of California in Berkeley, the University of Western Ontario in Canada, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain, Twente University in The Netherlands, the Technical University of Munich and the Fraunhofer Institute both in Germany, and IMEC in Belgium.