Investigation on seal-ring rules for IC product reliability in 0.25-mum CMOS technology

The distance between active region and the seal-ring location has been investigated in a 0.25m CMOS process. From the experimental results, this distance can be shrunk to only 5 m without increasing leakage current and decreasing ESD robustness of the ESD protection devices after reliability tests of High-Accelerated Stress Test (HAST) and Temperature Cycling Test (TCT). * Corresponding author. [email protected] Tel: (+886)-3-5917017; Fax: (+886)-3-5912060