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Technical Considerations For Controlling ESD In Electronics Manufacturing
As device geometries get smaller and processing speeds grow faster, their ESD sensitivity increases. Designers face the challenge of fi tting more active component features into smaller chip territory, often at the expense of on-chip protection devices. The trade off is greater risk for ESD damage. Mastering ESD control has always been critical to achieving high production yields, and it will become even more important in the next few years. While the industry has a solid understanding of ESD safety in manual operations involving personnel, there is room for improvement in automated applications. To be effective, ESD control programs must ensure that automated handling equipment is capable of handling tomorrows highly sensitive devices.
The Cost of ESD
ESD impacts productivity and product reliability in virtually every aspect of electronic environment. Despite the effort made over the past decade, ESD still costs the electronics industry billions of dollars every year. Industry experts attribute an estimated 8 to 33% of all product losses to be caused by ESD. fi tability.For todays automated facilities, conventional methods of ESD control must be re-examined and new methods applied. Automated assembly equipment is capable of processing 4,000 to 20,000 components an hour.
1 The individual cost of these devices themselves range from a few cents for a simple diode to several hundred dollars for complex hybrids. However, ESD damage affects more than just the loss of devices. It affects production yields, manufacturing costs, product quality and reliability, customer relationships, and ultimately, pro fi cult to locate. fi -cant physical component damage and affect production yields. The affects of EMI tend to be random in nature and can affect equipment across the room, but leave the equipment where the ESD event occurred untouched. This can make the location of the ESD event dif
2 At these speeds, poorly designed equipment that is allowed to charge devices can damage large amounts of components in a very short amount of time. Perhaps even more importantly, an ESD event can in turn damage the automated equip-
ment.ESD generates a signi fi cant amount of electromagnetic interference (EMI). The EMI resulting from an ESD event is often powerful enough to interrupt the operation of the production equipment. Equipment controlled by microproces-
sors is especially susceptible to damage as they operate in the same frequency range as the EMI from ESD events. Often mistaken for a software error or glitch in the system, EMI can cause a variety of equipment operating problems, such as stoppages, software errors, testing, and calibration inaccuracies as well as mishandling. All can cause signi
Extra pulse
Induced electromagneticdisturbance Equipment latch-up eventSoftware bug Figure 1: EMI resulting from ESD is often mistaken for a software glitch. 3