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1216 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 54, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012

EMC Protection of SCB Explosive Devices by Using

SMD-Based NTC Thermistors
Fei Chen, Bin Zhou, Zhi-Chun Qin, Gang Ren, Yong Li, and Pei-Kang Du

Abstract—This paper proposes a surface mount device- current under continuous EMI and does not affect the normal
based negative temperature coefficient thermistor as an ignition of SCB.
electromagnetic compatibility protection element for The organization of this paper is as follows. In Section II, the
semiconductor bridge (SCB) explosive devices. Because of
the small size, it can be integrated into the ceramic housing of design of SCB explosive device in parallel to NTC thermistor is
the SCB without increasing the packaging size and affecting outlined. In Section III, the protection mechanism is studied, the
the normal firing conditions of the SCB. This paper relationship between NTC thermistor resistance and temperature
demonstrates the usefulness of the protective method by firing experiments,
is presented temperature measurements,
and a protection margin level isand RF sensitivity
derived. In Sectiontests.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic compatibility, radio frequency IV, the protection capability of NTC thermistor is further supported
(RF), semiconductor bridge (SCB), surface mount device by firing experiments, temperature measurements, and RF
(SMD), thermistor. sensitivity tests. Some conclusions are drawn in Section V.

I. INTRODUCTION
OR low energy applications, semiconductor bridges
F (SCBs) has a suitable alternative to conventional hot-wire
igniters because they generally offer a higher margin between all-
fire and no-fire level. This makes them safer and more reliable
compared to their hot-wire counterpart [1]. However, because of
the small size and the low-ignition energy, many electromagnetic
compatibility (EMC) protection techniques used for large scale
integrated circuits cannot be applied for SCBs.
Similar to electro-explosive devices studied in [2], electro-
magnetic interference (EMI) can cause the bridge of the SCB to
heat. Given enough energy and time, the bridge wire temperature
may reach critical values with the consequence of an unwanted
SCB firing. In [3]–[5], various shielding elements, eg, low-pass
filters, ferrite materials, and composite wires are used to protect
SCBs from RF, whereas in [6]–[10] SCB chip structure and SCB
chip parameters has improved, eg, dielectric layer, semiconductor
junction, and nonlinear resistance behavior.
The aim of this paper is to extend the approach offered in [11].
The proposed protection mechanism is analyzed and the structure
of the ceramic housing with integrated negative temperature
coefficient (NTC) thermistor is designed. This methodology is
based on the high-temperature negative resistance characteristic
and surface mount device (SMD) package of the NTC thermistor
[12]. It can consume most of the electromagnetic coupling
II. EXPERIMENTAL SAMPLE
The bridge film of SCB explosive device used in this experiment
is a rectangular-shaped low-ignition-energy bridge and its ignition-
energy consumption is about 0.4 mJ, while the bridge of typical
SCB commonly used is double-V-type angular shaped and the
energy consumption is about 1.0 mJ. Bridge material is phosphorus-
doped polysilicon. Dopant concentration is about 1019 /cm3 and
bridge resistance is 1.4 ± 0.1 ÿ. The bridge size is 24 ÿm (Length)
× 100 ÿm (Width) × 2 ÿm (Thickness).
The resistance of NTC thermistors used in the experiment is
about 30 ÿ at room temperature. The size of SMD package is 1.6
mm (Length) × 0.8 mm (Width) × 0.8 mm (Thickness). The time
delay between SCB and NTC heating is less than 1 s.
Fig. 1(a) shows the front and top views of SCB chip. In Fig 1(b),
the package structure of SCB explosive device in parallel to NTC
thermistor is depicted. A SiO2 isolation layer is located between
the silicon substrate and the diffusion layer. The NTC thermistor
is placed at the bottom of the ceramic housing within a groove
between two pins. The groove is coated with epoxy resin that is
thermal but not electrically conductive. The two pins of the NTC
thermistor were connected to the two pins of the SCB by
conductive adhesive [see Fig. 1(b)].
III. THEORETICAL BASIS

SCB pins and connected wires can form a receiving antenna,

Manuscript received December 15, 2011; revised March 4, 2012, April 24,
2012, and May 18, 2012; accepted May 22, 2012. Date of publication July 23,
2012; date of current version December 14, 2012. This work was supported in
part by the National Basic Research Program of China under Program 973.
The authors are with the School of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Uni-
versity of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China (e-mail: chamfly@
gmail.com; zhoubin8266@sina.com; qinzhichun@163.com; cqnjrg@126. com;
264174815@qq.com; 443295663@qq.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TEMC.2012.2202120
for external EMI. Therefore, unwanted RF current can be in-
ducted into the SCB pins, which causes the film bridge to heat as
discussed in [13] and [14]. Fig. 2 shows a quasi-stationary model
of the proposed protection method, where IRF = source term,
RNTC = resistance of NTC, and RSCB = resistance of SCB film
bridge. It is assumed that a thermal equilibrium has been
established, ie, T = TSCB = TNTC , where TSCB = temperature
of SCB film bridge and TNTC is temperature of NTC. Note that
the model cannot be applied to normal firing of SCB that happens
in a far shorter time scale (microseconds) and where a

0018-9375/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

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CHEN et al.: EMC PROTECTION OF SCB EXPLOSIVE DEVICES BY USING SMD-BASED NTC THERMISTORS 1217

Fig. 3. SCB protection margin ÿ(T).

Fig. 4. Diagram of the capacitor discharge circuit.

Fig. 1. (a) Structure Diagrams of SCB chip and (b) SCB explosive device.

Fig. 2. Schematic circuit of SCB in parallel to NTC thermistor.

thermal equilibrium between film bridge and NTC has not been
established (see also Section IV-A).
In order to determine the amount of additional protection
given by the NTC element, an SCB protection margin ÿ may
be introduced: Fig. 5. SCB voltage and current signal (22 ÿF, 9 V).

ISCB,1
ÿ = 20log [dB] (1)
ISCB,0 the protection margin calculated to
where ISCB,0 = ISCB current without NTC and ISCB,1 = ISCB RNTC
current with the NTC element. ÿ = 20log . (3)
RNTC + RSCB
With

ISCB,0 = IRF
From reference [15], the resistance of NTC is given to

RNTC 1 1
ISCB,1 = IRF (2) RNTC (T) = R0 exp B
ÿ

(4)
RNTC + RSCB T T0

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1218 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 54, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012

TABLE I
INFLUENCE OF NTC THERMISTOR TO THE ELECTRO-EXPLOSIVE PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS OF SCB (22 ÿF, 9 V)

where R0 is the resistance measured at T0 which is the
reference temperature—usually 298.15 K, and B = 3700 K is
the material constant corresponding to the experimental sample. talum capacitor was used as the firing energy-storage capacitor.
Obviously, RNTC decreases exponentially with T and works
against a further increase in T. Because RNTC changes with
temperature, ÿ is also a function of T (see Fig. 3). An important
value is the protection margin below firing temperature T = TF ÿ 235EÿC.
For this case, the protection margin amounts to approximately
19 dB.
IV. EXPERIMENT
A. Capacitor Discharge Firing Experiment
The capacitor discharge firing experiment shall demonstrate
that NTC protection element does not interfere with normal
firing of SCB. Capacitor discharge was used as an ignition
excitation source to acquire SCB voltage and current data as a
function of time in the firing process. The experimental circuit
diagram is shown in Fig. 4. The measurement system consists
of a capacitance, a constant-voltage source, an electronic
switch, and a digital oscilloscope. First, the capacitor was
charged. Then, the discharge circuit was connected by an
electronic switch to inject a current pulse into the SCB. Fig. 5
shows the typical voltage and current curves obtained by
oscilloscope measurement, where the black curve is the SCB
voltage signal and the red curve corresponds to the SCB current signal.
The postprocessing of experimental data was taken by
software origin 8.0 to obtain function time and ignition-energy
consumption. The function time, which corresponds to the
second peak of the voltage curve, is from the beginning of the
discharge until the time plasma is generated. The power is
integrated based on the function time to get the ignition-energy
consumption. The leakage current and internal resistance of tantalumthermometer
both very small and the discharging is fast, which meets the
firing requirement of SCB explosive device. So, the 22-ÿF tan-
At room temperature, the firing experiment was carried out
under the condition of a given power supply (9 V) and
capacitance (22 ÿF). According to the equation , the total input
= 0.5CU2 energy is 0.891 mJ, and the results were listed in Table I.
According to the experimental results in Table I, SCB
explosive devices in parallel to thermistors can normally fire.
The function time increases while the actual energy consumption
of bridge decreases, but the changes are less than 10%. This is
due to the fast operation of SCB film that the firing process is
finished in a few microseconds after the tantalum capacitor
discharges and injects a voltage pulse into the explosive device.
During such a short period of time, the NTC thermistor cannot
respond to the high temperature generated in the firing process;
therefore, its resistance is invariable and divides only a little
current. The initial resistance of the NTC thermistor used in this
experiment is about 30 ÿ. Thus, there is only 3% ignition-energy
consuming on the thermistor.
B. Temperature Measurement and Safety Test
The temperature test system consists of a constant current
source, a computer and an infrared radiation thermometer
shown in Fig. 6. Switch was turned OFF and 1-A constant
current was injected to SCB pins by power supply. The duration
of current was 5 min. SCB chip emitted infrared energy after
being injected electric current. The infrared energy converged
in the center field of FLIR A40 thermometer was focused on the
photoelectric detector that converted the optical signal to a
corresponding electrical signal. Afterwards, this electrical signal
was converted to the temperature of the bridge film. The
was connected to a computer and the real-time temperature
capacitor are

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CHEN et al.: EMC PROTECTION OF SCB EXPLOSIVE DEVICES BY USING SMD-BASED NTC THERMISTORS
Fig. 6. Diagram of the temperature test system.
Fig. 7. Thermal image of SCB.
bridge film was recorded. Fig. 7 shows the thermal image of the
SCB chip.
The emissivity of the bridge film that is the most important
factor on accuracy of testing temperature was calibrated to
0.743. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed
protection method, a temperature measurement has been
performed for an (inert) SCB with NTC thermistor and for an
(inert) SCB without NTC thermistor. Both SCBs have been tested
under the injection of 1-A dc-current. Fig. 8 shows the measured
surface temperature of SCB with thermistor (black curve) and
without thermistor (red curve) over time.
The figure illustrates that NTC thermistor can effectively re- The test system simulates the actual RF environment. It consists
duce the surface temperature of SCB film bridge. The red curve
shows that the temperature quickly rises at the beginning of the
current flow to a maximum of 280 ÿC after 25 s. Then, the SCB
bridge got damaged by forming a low resistive path between the
two electrodes. The resistance of the bridge dropped from
original 1.4 to 0.2 ÿ which explains the following decrease in
temperature. However, a real SCB with explosive had already
fired at a temperature of 235 ÿC where lead styphnate (LTNR)
begins to decompose and blast [16].
For comparison, the black curve in Fig. 8 shows that the
surface temperature of bridge film rapidly increases to 95 ÿC at
the beginning. One second later, the NTC thermistor immediately
re-responds to this temperature by decreasing its resistance.
Because of its low resistance less than 1.0 ÿ, NTC thermistor
begins to divide current and surface bridge temperature reduces to 60 test samples fired under 20 W. The test results show that
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1219
Fig. 8. Temperature-time variation curve of SCB film.
Fig. 9. Schematic diagram of RF sensitivity test system.
After 100 s, a thermal equilibrium is reached and temperature is
constant at about 100 ÿC. Polysilicon film and ignition
composition are not damaged under such low temperature.
Resistance of bridge film and appearance of surface are not
changed after the experiment, either.
C. RF Sensitivity Test
According to GJB 5309.13-2004 [17], conducted RF sensitivity
tests have been performed with real explosive SCB devices to
verify the proposed protection method in an RF environment.
of an RF source, whose frequency and output power are
adjustable, a signal amplifier, a directional coupler, matching
devices, and a shelter for blast protection. The diagram of the
test system is shown in Fig. 9
A test frequency of 400 MHz has been used to match
impedance between RF source and SCB optimally. Before the
test, the RF source was preheated for 15 min. Next, SCB
explosive device was connected to the output of the RF test
system. The high power RF source was turned ON and the input
power was adjusted. Finally, SCB explosive device was
connected to the power supply for 10 s. The test results are listed in Table II
From Table II, it can be observed that low-ignition-energy
SCBs all fired under 9.74 W while neither of the SCBs in parallel
to NTC thermistors fired under the same condition. Only one of
tenÿC.
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1220
TABLE II
IGNITION STATUS OF SCBS IN RF SENSITIVITY TEST
NTC thermistor can reduce the RF sensitivity of SCB explosive
device and enhance its safety properties against EMI.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The structure of SCB explosive device in parallel to NTC
thermistor was designed and manufactured. Firing experiments,
temperature measurements, and RF sensitivity tests have been
performed. The experimental results were analyzed and
discussed. The conclusions are as follows.
1) SCBs in parallel to NTC thermistors can fire normally and
electro-explosive performance has no significant variation.
NTC thermistor is nondestructive to the normal ignition of
explosive device.
2) The temperature measurement and safety test shows that
the resistance of the SCB film does not change and the
maximum temperature is below any destruction level in
case of a parallel mounted NTC.
3) NTC thermistor can reduce the RF sensitivity of SCB
explosive device and strengthen its ability against EMI
Therefore, NTC thermistor can be used as an RF protection
element in order to protect SCB explosive device against RF
interferences or RF stray energy. Furthermore, it does not affect
the ignition of SCB under normal firing conditions. The design
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 54, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012
structure of SCB in parallel to NTC thermistor has been given in
this paper. It makes the NTC response rapid and sensitive to the
temperature on the SCB chip and does not increase the volume
of the explosive device. It is a feasible new technology to use
NTC thermistor on EMC protection of SCBs.
REFERENCES
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[8] TA Baginski and AS Hodel, "The semiconductor junction igniter: A novel
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[9] TA Baginski and ME Baginski, "A novel RF-insensitive EED using an
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[10] TA Baginski, "Characterization of a nonohmic RF-insensitive solid-state
ignition element," IEEE Trans. Electromagnet Compat., vol. 35, no. 4, pp.
475–478, Nov. 1993.
[11] F. Chen, B. Zhou, and ZC Qin, "Protection of semiconductor bridge initiators
by using NTC RF interference thermistors," J. Nanjing Univ.
Sci. Technol., vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 171–175, Feb. 2012.
[12] XL Shen, "Study on temperature characteristics of NTC thermistors,"
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[14] MR Lambrecht, KL Cartwright, and CE Baum, “Electromagnetic modeling
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[15] WM Wang, M. Zhao, and HJ Zhang, "Progress on the compositions and
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[16] RG Jiang and ZT Liu, Initiating Explosives: Beijing, China, Weapon
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[17] "Test methods of initiating explosive devices-part 13," Radio-Frequency
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Fei Chen was born in Yancheng, China, in 1985.
He received the B.Eng. degree in special energy and
phytotechnics from the Nanjing University of Science
and Technology, Jiangsu, China, in 2007. He is
currently working towards the Ph.D. degree in military
chemistry and pyrotechnics with Nanjing University
of Science and Technology, Jiangsu, China.
His current research interests include simulation
of electromagnetic transients in power systems and
electromagnetic compatibility of explosive technology.
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CHEN et al.: EMC PROTECTION OF SCB EXPLOSIVE DEVICES BY USING SMD-BASED NTC THERMISTORS 1221

Bin Zhou was born in Daye, China, in 1971. She
received the B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in the
applied chemistry from the Nanjing University of
Science and Technology, Jiangsu, China, in July 1992,
April 1995, and April 2004, respectively.
In December 1997, she became a Lecturer, and
since 2003, she has been an Associate Professor
with the Department of Applied Chemistry, Nanjing
University of Science and Technology. Her current
research interests include electrostatic discharge pro-
tection and electromagnetic compatibility of electro-
explosive devices, and initiating technology.
Yong Li was born in Sichuan, China, in 1986. He
received the B.Eng. degree in special energy and
pyrotechnics from the Nanjing University of Science
and Technology, Jiangsu, China, in 2010, where he is
currently working towards the Ph.D. degree in military
chemistry and pyrotechnics.
His current research interests include firing
reliability research and energy conversion of
semiconductor bridge.

Pei-kang Du was born in Shandong, China, in 1988.

Zhi-chun Qin was born in Nanjing, China, in 1955.
She received the B.Eng. degree in electrical
engineering from the Nanjing University of Science and
Technology, Jiangsu, China, in 1982.
In September 1987, she became a Lecturer, and
she helped us after her retirement in 2010. She is
currently with the School of Chemical Engineering,
Nanjing University of Science and Technology. Er
current research interests include test technology
of input and output performance of explosive devices
and SCB.
He received the B.Eng. degree in chemical engineer-
ing and technology from Shandong Normal Univer-
sity, Jinan, China, in 2010. He is currently working
towards the M.Eng. degree in chemical technology
in the Nanjing University of Science and Technology,
Jiangsu, China.
His current research interests include anti-EMI of
semiconductor bridge.

Gang Ren was born in Chongqing, China, in 1986.

He received the B.Eng. degree in particular energy and
phytotechnics from the Nanjing University of Science
and Technology, Jiangsu, China, in 2009, where he is
currently working towards the M.Eng. degree in
military chemistry and pyrotechnics.
His current research interests include EMI-
insensitivity of semiconductor bridge.

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