Abstract: The ionizer of the present invention comprises a chamber which has an ionization part that ionizes a portion of an ion carrier gas that is supplied to the interior of this chamber, and a blowing part which feeds the ion carrier gas toward a charged body. The ionization part is constructed from an ionization source which is contained in the chamber, and a control device which is connected with this ionization source via a high-voltage cable. Either the generating part of a soft X-ray generating device, the generating part of a low-energy electron beam generating device or the generating part of an ultraviolet radiation generating device is used as the ionization source. The control device, the connecting part between the control device and the high-voltage cable and the connecting part between the ionization source and the high-voltage cable are formed with an explosion-proof structure.

Abstract: An ESD protection circuit (201) is for use with a high-voltage tolerant I/O circuit in an IC. This is accomplished by providing a small ESD diode (217) from the I/O pad to a relatively small boosted voltage bus (BOOST BUS). The BOOST BUS is used to power a trigger circuit (203). This path has very little current flow during an ESD event due to minimal current dissipation in the trigger circuit. There is a diode drop but only very little IR voltage drop from the I/O pad to the trigger circuit (203). The trigger circuit (203) controls relatively large cascoded clamp NMOSFETs (207, 209). The net result is that a gate-to-source voltage (VGS) of both of the clamp NMOSFETs is increased thus increasing the conductivity of the cascoded clamp NMOSFETs (207, 209). This reduces the on-resistance of each of the NMOSFETS (207, 209), thereby improving the ESD performance, and reducing the layout area required to implement robust ESD protection circuits.