High-voltage lateral devices commonly uses the RESURF concept to achieve a high breakdown voltage. This however limits the conducting performance in the drift region due to the drift region charge that is determined by the RESURF criteria. This paper shows a method to overcome this limitation without effecting the breakdown voltage. The concept is to create a dual conducting device by introducing two extra layers in the drift region. Using the proposed method shows that the drift region resistance can be reduced with a factor 2 without significant reduction of the breakdown voltage. The substrate used is a CMOS substrate which makes it possible to use this concept in a conventional CMOS process. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.