Presentazioni e Articoli Tecnici

Sensors for industrial applications require electro-magnetic compatibility protection elements. It is an advantage to incorporate the protection elements directly in the application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). These protection elements however experience significant heating. It was not possible to apply the conventional IC design process. We established new design rules.To do so we used the finite element method (FEM) to model the heat dissipation after a surge pulse in a test chip.

Owing to our results, the industrial partner was able to integrate high-voltage surge pulse protection elements directly in the ASIC designs. This innovation has met wide acclaim within the sensor industry. A decisive factor for this success was our thermal compact model which led to the new design rules.