SEMICONDUCTOR CIRCUIT FOR LEAKAGE CURRENT MITIGATION AND METHOD OF DETECTING AND MITIGATING LEAKAGE CURRENT RUNAWAY

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an apparatus and method for mitigating a leakage current of a semiconductor device before catastrophic leakage current runaway occurs.SOLUTION: A leakage current shift monitor unit 20 is electrically connected to an output node of a leakage current target unit 10 and collects leakage currents from a selected target semiconductor device for two consecutive predefined temporal periods and measures the difference between the collected leakage currents. A comparator 40 receives and compares the outputs of the current shift monitor unit 20 and a reference voltage generator 30. The comparator 40 propagates an alert signal to the leakage current target unit 10 when the leakage voltage output from the leakage current shift monitor unit 20 exceeds the reference voltage, that is, a condition that indicates that the leakage current is about to approach catastrophic runaway levels. This alert signal attains leak mitigation also including a repair voltage to be applied to a gate of the target semiconductor device.