Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD (대한전자공학회논문지SD)

The Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (대한전자공학회)
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Latch-Up Prevention Method having Power-Up Sequential Switches for LCD Driver ICs

LCD 구동 IC를 위한 Power-Up 순차 스위치를 가진 Latch-Up 방지 기술

  • Choi, Byung-Ho (Semiconductor Division, Samsung Electronics) ;
  • Kong, Bai-Sun (School of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University) ;
  • Jun, Young-Hyun (Semiconductor Division, Samsung Electronics)
  • 최병호 (삼성전자 반도체총괄) ;
  • 공배선 (성균관대학교 정보통신공학부) ;
  • 전영현 (삼성전자 반도체총괄)
  • Published : 2008.06.25
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Abstract

In this paper, novel latch-up prevention method that employs power-up sequential switches has been proposed to relieve latch-up problem in liquid crystal display (LCD) driver ICs. These sequential switches are inserted in the 2'nd and 3'rd boosting stages, and are used to short the emitter-base terminals of parasitic p-n-p-n circuit before relevant boosting stages are activated during power-up sequence. To verily the performance of the proposed method, test chips were designed and fabricated in a 0.13-um CMOS process technology. The measurement results indicated that, while the conventional LCD driver If entered latch-up mode at $50^{\circ}C$ accompanying a significant amount of excess current, the driver IC adopting the proposed method showed no latch-up phenomenon up to $100^{\circ}C$ and maintained normal current level of 0.9mA.

액정 구동 IC에서 발생하는 기생 p-n-p-n 회로의 래치업 문제를 개선하기 위해 power-up 순서상에 순차 스위치를 삽입하는 방법을 제안하였다. 제안된 순차 스위치는 2차-승압회로와 3차-승압회로 내에 삽입되며, power-up 순서상에서 해당 승압회로가 동작하기 전에 기생 p-n-p-n 회로의 분리된 에미터-베이스 단자를 순차적으로 연결하게 된다. 제안된 구조의 성능을 검증하기 위해 0.13-um CMOS 공정을 이용하여 테스트 IC를 설계 제작하였다 측정 결과, 기존의 경우 $50^{\circ}C$에서 액정 구동 전압이 VSS로 수렴하면서 과전류를 동반하며 래치업 모드로 진입하였으나, 제안 회로를 삽입한 경우는 고온($100^{\circ}C$)에서도 정상 전류 0.9mA와 정상 액정 구동 전압을 나타내어 래치업이 방지되고 있음을 확인하였다.

Keywords

References

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