We present for the first time, analysis of irreversible snapback caused due to the regenerative n-p-n turn-on in a DENMOS through a critical understanding of 'thermal runaway' under ESD conditions. The estimated It2 value from transient simulations has been correlated with the quasi-steady TLP data. A new regenerative bipolar turn-on induced failure model has been proposed and corroborated with experimental observations and failure analysis. We have also investigated the current crowding mechanism to understand the improvement in It2 value under gate and substrate biasing. © 2007 IEEE.