In this paper we present a new electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit called gate coupled and zener diode triggering silicon-controlled rectifiers (GCZDSCR) for IC protection. The proposed new SCR circuit consists of a trigger controlling and a holding SCR circuit, and the trigger controlling circuit is made of a gate-coupled circuit in parallel with a reverse-biased zener diode. The circuit can protect IC irrespective of the temporal voltage waveform of the overvoltage stress. In the dc overvoltage stress, the zener diode conducts a triggering current to trigger the SCR; in the dynamic ESD transient stress, both the gate-coupled circuit and the zener diode can conduct a triggering current to trigger the holding SCR circuit. Since the gate-coupled circuit has a shorter response time at high and fast-transient ESD overvoltage stress, the GC circuit takes over as the main role in determining the ESD transient response of the protection circuit. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.