A novel gate-coupled electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection structure, called bonding-pad capacitance gate-coupled device, is designed. The new structure solves the problem of the traditional gcMOS device not being able to give correct transient response to some specific ESD events. The device layout area is also reduced. The measured results show that the novel structure has a 26%—41% layout area reduction and a high ESD robustnesss greater than 8 kV in a standard 0.5 μm single poly triple metal complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor process.