Basics

“Factory ESD control is expected to play an ever-increasing critical role as the industry is flooded with even more HBM (Human Body Model) and CDM (Charged Device Model) sensitive designs.”

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is the hidden enemy within your factory. You cannot feel or see most ESD events, but they can cause electronic components to fail or cause mysterious and annoying problems.

When people are asked what is the most commonly used component in electrical or electronic circuits, the typical answers are “Well, of course everyone knows its resistors”, or “It must be capacitors”, and even sometimes “Nothing operates without transistors”. In fact, none of those answers are correct; the real answer is that conductors are the most common type of component.

A “battery” is the generic term for an electrochemical source of electricity, which stores energy in a chemically bound form, and which can convert this directly into electric power. A battery may be either a single cell or multiple cells connected in series/parallel configurations.