Abstract: In an anti-ESD protective structure, especially designed for pins destined to reach below ground and/or above supply voltages, includes a pair of Zener diodes or lateral NPN structures with a resistive connection between base and emitter, connected in opposition among each other between the pin to be protected and a grounded substrate of the integrated circuit. An amplifying effect on the leakage current which is drawn/injected through the pin by the protective structure caused by the triggering of an intrinsic parasitic transistor is effectively eliminated by connecting a biasing element, such as a forward biased junction, between the node of interconnection between the two Zener orlateral NPN structures and a node of the integrated circuit biased with a voltage sufficiently high as to ensure, under any condition, a reverse biasing of the base-emitter junction of the parasitic transistor.

Abstract: A measuring structure includes a first resistor for converting a current to be measured into a voltage, and an operational amplifier for measuring the current. A second resistor connected in series to, and integrated with, the first resistor, is activated by an input terminal solely at the wafer testing stage, to reduce, in relation to the nominal value, the current corresponding to a predetermined voltage value detected by the operational amplifier, and to enable optimum correlation of the reduced current value obtainable during wafer testing and the corresponding nominal current value.

Abstract: A voltage comparator with several parallel output channels connected to respective threshold circuits is responsive to the increase of the charge voltage of a capacitor with a linear variation of output currents in the channels. The different output currents, equal or different to each other but all with the same variation rates, are converted into control voltages of the threshold circuits, which are of different value but change with identical rates, so as to reach the threshold value of the respective threshold circuits at different times. From the outputs of the threshold circuits there exit the desired timely connected synchronously related signals, which may be either simple leading or trailing fronts or pulses.