Patent ID: 8913357

Claim:
An ESD circuit comprises: a pad rail and a ground rail; a pad coupled to the pad rail; a ground coupled to the ground rail; a sensing element coupled between the pad and ground rails for sensing an ESD current, the sensing element generates an active sense output signal when an ESD current is sensed and an inactive sense output signal when no ESD current is sensed; a bypass element comprising a bi-polar junction transistor, the bypass element is coupled in parallel to the sensing element between the pad and ground rails; and a control element having a control input coupled to the sensing element and a control output coupled to the bypass element, the control element comprises first and second inverters and a control switch, wherein the control switch includes first and second transistors coupled in parallel, and an output of the first inverter is coupled to a gate terminal of the first transistor and an output of the second inverter is coupled to a gate terminal of the second transistor, wherein the active sense output signal causes the control element to activate the bypass element to provide a current path between the pad and ground rails and provides ESD protection to a bi-directional circuit.