esd

Industry standards play a major role in providing meaningful metrics and common procedures that allow various manufacturers, customers, and suppliers to communicate from facility to facility around the world. Standards are increasingly important in our global economy.

What does “certification” mean to you? What is the value of becoming “certified?” The answer to this question has to include an answer to another question, “what is being certified?” In the electrostatic control arena, the world’s premier organization for education and standards development is the EOS/ESD Association, Inc.

With the inventions of the transistor in 1948 and the Integrated Circuit in 1958, and the utilization of these major breakthroughs in the development of computers and other electronic devices, industry began to worry about and to design components and end-products that could survive the discharge of electrostatic discharges to chips, printed circuit boards, and final packaged-products.

The immunity to ESD of present-day electronic components and devices has further decreased due to the high sensitivity of ICs.

Electronic devices can be exposed to electrostatic discharge (ESD). The discharge process generates rapid electric and magnetic processes that can impair the function of the electronic devices. Devices are tested for their immunity to ESD using special ESD generators and test setups (EN 61004-2).