This updated version of an article originally published in the March 2014 issue provides details on recent and current developments in the ESD testing of electronic products.
Going back several decades, Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) design and layout checks that were done manually were laborious and time-consuming, let alone not confidently reliable.
During the last four decades, damage to devices from electrical overstress (EOS) has confounded both IC suppliers and customers. The Industry Council on ESD Target Levels investigated numerous EOS root causes and established a white paper on the subject, JEP174 [1].
In this article we discuss the MOS transistor in the role of ESD protection for high-voltage applications and take a look into a possible future of ESD protection devices for high-performance computing applications.
The trend of progressively migrating both ESD and EMC immunity from the system/board to the component level is creating unprecedented challenges for the component ESD designer. Implications of EMC-ESD immunity co-design will be reviewed along with several case studies.
It is a common misconception that designing an IC for system-level ESD requirements simply requires an increase in the capability of the ESD cells, which are already present for safe handling ESD requirements, like Human Body Model (HBM).