1 Introduction

Component integration in modern electronic systems enhances performance by increasing functionality. Most of these systems use sensitive and expensive electronic devices (field-programmable gate arrays, application-specific integrated circuits and microprocessors) that need protection.

Traditional protection solutions such as fuses, positive temperature coefficient resistors, diodes and discrete circuits (including fuses, metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors and diodes) are inaccurate, slower to respond, and lack configurability and repeatability. Thus, active circuit protection using eFuse and hot-swap solutions have begun to replace discrete front-end protection circuits in many applications [1], [2].

Active-circuit-protection eFuses often need additional protection, however, to protect them from transient events. The most common transient events include hot plugging, abrupt current interruption, power surges, hard switching and reverse voltages.

Any of these transient events put electrical overstress on the device, leading to failure. In this article, we’ll discuss electrical overstress (EOS) and the design process for transient protection components in a 200A eFuse enterprise server application, including placement and printed circuit board (PCB) layout considerations.