Electrostatic Discharge – Page 3 – Ground Zero Electrostatics Blog

12 Feb

ESD: Grounding, Isolation & Prevention

The Pilllars of ESD Protection

We’ve all had it happen. We’re opening our car door on a cold day, or we’ve just shuffled in our socks to the door and the moment we reach out, pop! A small snap of static electricity reminds us that we’re alive.

Think back to when you were a kid – your dad or uncle perhaps, showed you the power of static electricity by rubbing a balloon on your head and sticking it to the wall or causing your hair to rise up of its own accord. These tricks with static electricity are great for a chuckle or two. When you’re rubbing the balloon or your socks on the floor, it creates an imbalance of electrons, and that potential energy rests on your body or the surface of the balloon, waiting to discharge. Eventually it does and this sudden restoring of the electrons to their neutral state is called an electrostatic discharge or ESD.

That little tiny jolt of static electricity seems small but is really 3,000 volts – for humans, it’s the amperage that gets you. Unfortunately, for small electronics: circuit boards, semiconductors or even simple devices around the home, much smaller static discharges – ones too light to ever be sensed by our skin – can cause minor errors, or even completely destroy a device’s usefulness. In this situation, ESD is no laughing matter.

In a business—especially one that manufactures or handles a lot of electronics, but even in a typical office environment—this kind of damage can get expensive quickly.

So today, we’re going to talk about the three pillars of controlling ESD: Grounding, Isolation and Prevention.

Grounding

If you’ve worked with small electronics much at all, you’re probably aware that there are certain things you should do to prevent damage to that circuitry. You’re probably familiar with the third prong on many electrical cords. Just like the grounding plug diminishes the risk of you being electrocuted, grounding yourself and your work area keeps your circuit boards and electrical components safe by discharging any built up static electricity.

At a bare minimum, utilizing a grounding wrist band is extremely helpful. Many sellers include disposable bands when they ship electronic components, but we highly recommend owning and utilizing your own personal metal ground wrist strap that connects directly to your work surface with a personal ground cord. Always make sure the wrist strap is snug and is touching the skin to allow the charge to dissipate.

Isolation

Static charges cannot penetrate containers that are made of conductive materials or have a conductive layer. That’s why electronic components usually arrive in metallized shielding bags or a conductive tote box. Don’t forget you must ground them before opening. And don’t set these components just anywhere. What many people fail to realize is that simple items that can be found on any normal work surface – even an ESD mat – can also cause unnecessary static buildup that could lead to a fatal discharge.

Transparent tape, plastic sandwich bags, water bottles, Styrofoam coffee cups, even paperwork or blueprints can hold a static charge just waiting to wreak havoc on unsuspecting components. And even if you are properly grounded, holding the components too close to your clothing can also result in an ESD.

Prevention

Always take proper precautions when working on electronic components. Follow all of the tips above, and if you’re going to be working on several components or multiple projects, we recommend investing in some ESD bench and table matting for your work surface. It integrates well with a personal ground cord and wrist band and is the best solution for ESD prevention. A few dollars spent here as well as on ESD protective containers can mean plenty of money saved on ruined components as well as lost time while waiting for replacements.

Following these simple suggestions can mean a much safer environment for both you and your electronic components – and you can leave the static charge at home for parlor tricks.

07 Jan

Why Do You Need ESD Shoes?

You’ve heard teachers say, “Any question is a good question, so ask away!”

So, here’s a question…“Why Do I Need ESD Shoes?” Before we answer that, let’s briefly review electrostatic discharge first.

Electrostatic Discharge or ESD: A Quick Review

Simply defined, static electricity is an electrical charge caused by an imbalance of electrons on the surface of a material. This imbalance produces an electrical field that can be measured and that can influence other objects at a distance. Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) is the transfer of charges between bodies at different electrical potentials.

You are most likely aware of ESD at two extremes: the annoyance of that shock from striding across a carpet or witnessing the destructive nature of a lightning strike.

However, between these two extremes are electrostatic discharges found in workplace environments that can actually be costly or dangerous. Personnel shock injuries can range from a mild annoyance to a temporary loss of sight or hearing.

This same static discharge can ignite flammable mixtures and damage electronic components. Static electricity can also attract contaminants in clean environments or cause products to stick together. Sometimes called the “invisible enemy”, static electricity or ESD can wreak havoc in many work environments if not properly managed.

Why You Need ESD Shoes…

While there are physical and mechanical causes for ESD in manufacturing, technological or office environments, personnel are considered a primary cause of electrostatic discharge. In other words, personnel themselves charge up their own bodies! The clothing and shoes they wear generate electrostatic charges when they scoot in and out of their chairs, or as they shuffle across the floors. It can even be generated in unintentional movement as shirt fabric rubs up against the skin. (Talk about being charged up and ready to go!)

Combined with ESD flooring, you can prevent damaging buildup of static discharge with ESD shoes. Static dissipative footwear is designed to reduce the accumulation of excess static electricity by conducting the body charge to the ground, while maintaining a high enough level of electrical resistance.

Suggested industries that would benefit from ESD flooring and footwear include laboratories, clean rooms, hospitals, utility plants, high-tech manufacturing, car manufacturing and plastics, just to name a few.

What We Offer…

To offset potential damages from ESD, Ground Zero offers a variety of protective footwear:

Sporty: We offer a variety of high-quality conductive, static dissipative & regular athletic oxfords and sneakers. Models include steel toe and comfortable padding.
Casual: These casual shoes include conductive or static dissipative models for business casual or dressy environments. They feature steel toe design as well as comfortable padding.
Unisex: We also have formal or sporty styles for both men & women in slip-ons, clean room shoes or boat shoes.
Boots & Hikers: If you’re looking for work boots with weatherproof qualities, we have those, too!

Bottom Line: ESD Shoes will help the flow of electrons built up on the body choose a path to the ground rather than a destructive and potentially costly path toward your electronics or work environment!

31 Dec

What is the Triboelectric Effect?

Static electricity is an imbalance of electrical charges within or on the surface of a material. The charge remains until it is able to move away by means of an electric current or electrical discharge.

Nature likes things to be in balance, therefore static electricity will inevitably result in an electrical discharge unless otherwise redirected by means of a pathway or current.

So the question is… How does an imbalance of electrical charges occur?

The answer is with the Triboelectric Effect.

To understand it, we first need to review a few basics.

Where Electrical Charges Come From

At rest, objects are neither negatively nor positively charged. In this state, they are considered neutral with respect to electrical charge.

The basics of the atom: nucleus and electrons

The atom is made up of a nucleus (containing protons, neutrons) surrounded by an orbiting cloud of electrons

If you remember your high-school physics on the construction of the atom, you’ll recall that every atom has protons (which are positively charged) and neutrons (which are neither positively nor negatively charged) in the nucleus, which is surrounded by electrons (which are negatively charged).

The atom holds onto its nucleus very tightly—in fact the forces that hold the nucleus together are, quite literally, nuclear.

The electrons, on the other hand, have the ability to flow from one object to another by contact. Some objects are more willing to release electrons than others, while other objects are more able to attract electrons. Whether electrons are likely to come or go really depends upon the materials, the pairing of two objects and other environmental conditions, such as air quality.

Materials have been ranked by scientists in the order of their ability to hold or give up electrons upon contact. This ranking is called the Triboelectric Series.

The Triboelectric Effect

Under ideal conditions, if two materials are rubbed together, the one higher on the list should give up electrons and become positively charged.

With repeated contact, a bond is created between the objects as the two items exchange electrons. However, when separation occurs, each object does not necessarily carry off the same number of electrons that it brought to the party.

Therein lies the imbalance of electrical charges where one object will have a buildup of negative charges and the other a buildup of positive charges.

This process of building up an electrical charge through contact is known as the Triboelectric Effect.

How Does Electrostatic Discharge Occur?

You have heard that opposites attract. So it is with the negatively charged and positively charged objects.

Remember we said earlier that nature will seek out a balance? Therefore, when you move a more positively charged item close to an item that is neutral or more negatively charged, the electrons will be attracted to—and try to flow toward—the positive charge. The same is true in reverse.

This movement of the electrons seeking balance is the electrostatic discharge, which creates a shock or spark—sometimes too small to detect, and other times quite powerful and destructive!

It is very important to be aware and understand the movement of these electrons through a work space in order to limit the possibility of costly and damaging discharges of static electricity.

24 Dec

Why Should I Care About ESD?

Electrocstatic discharge (ESD)… what in the world is it and why should I care about it?

If you’re an engineer, an architect, or in the electronics manufacturing industry, you’re most likely aware of what ESD is and the havoc it can wreak.

But, if you’re not in any of those industries, should you even bother caring about what it is?

Yes!

Maybe you:

install and maintain computer networks
repair electronic devices
are a serious gamer who likes to tinker with your computers
are a workbench enthusiast who likes to take stuff apart, or
manage a team of people who work with sensitive or valuable data (your data is valuable, right?)

No matter what the case… you need to be aware of electrostatic discharge and its effects on your electronics.

First of all… What is ESD?

Electrostatic discharge, or ESD, is a natural phenomenon. It’s present in everyday life and happens all the time, often without anyone realizing it. It is the sudden flow of electricity between two electrically charged objects caused by contact, an electrical short, or dielectric breakdown (electrical breakdown).

This sudden flow of electricity is what causes problems for computer networks and everyday electronic devices.

An obvious form of electrostatic discharge would be lightning (also known as large-scale ESD event), but a less obvious form would be the shock you feel after walking across carpet and then touching the doorknob. Perhaps the most insidious forms are the ones too small for you to detect, but powerful enough to damage the circuits on your devices.

Why Should I Care?

Two significant reasons for being aware of ESD and its effects are…

Loss of Peak Performance. If you would like your networks or equipment to perform optimally, you should take steps to avoid ESD damage. Over time, ESD reduces the performance of your system and can significantly reduce the life of your equipment. Save yourself the time, money, and hassle and protect your equipment.
It’s Expensive! Over 50% of hardware failures are due to electrostatic discharge. Eliminate ESD and save money!

How Do I Protect My Networks and Devices?

So whether you’re the “IT guy” or the “gamer gal,” creating an Electrostatic Discharge Protected Area is a great starting point, including:

ESD flooring
Grounding devices like wrist straps
Grounded static dissipative work surfaces
ESD clothing and shoes
ESD packaging
Signage

If you need more information regarding electrostatic discharge, we’re here to provide the expertise you need, as well as the equipment. As experts in the prevention and elimination of ESD for more than 15 years, we have the knowledge and proven catalog of products to help you solve any of your ESD challenges. Feel free to check out the rest of our blog or get in touch anytime.

14 Sep

Dissipative vs. Static Conductive Flooring: Which Works Best?

Previously, we talked in greater detail about how ESD flooring works. But when it comes to choosing what type of static control flooring to use, the biggest question you need to answer is this:

Should I use static dissipative flooring or static conductive flooring?

Perhaps the most important factor you’ll need to consider in making this decision is safety.

Shouldn’t I Always Choose the Fastest Pathway to Ground?

At first glance, it might seem like a no-brainer: just put in the flooring that has the lowest resistance so that electrostatic discharge is carried most quickly and efficiency to ground. If that’s true, then static conductive flooring is an obvious choice.

But if the floor is too conductive, then we introduce another set of risks to personal safety.

This is where we start to get into safety standards developed by OSHA and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), among others.

Put simply, “static dissipative” flooring and “static conductive” flooring are two very specific classifications based upon levels of conductivity which is measured in terms of the materials’ resistance to electricity.

Resistance of ESD Flooring Options

Resistance, or impedance, is measurable, and is expressed in ohms. The ohm is a unit of measurement named after Georg Ohm, the German physicist who discovered Ohm’s law. In specifications documents, schematics, and other materials, the ohm is represented by the symbol Ω (the Greek letter omega).

Put simply, higher resistance = lower conductivity.

A substance with resistance measured at zero ohms (0 Ω) would highly conductive conductive (carbon, silver, and copper all have resistance measured in a fraction of an ohm). On the opposite end of the spectrum, a substance with 1 billion ohms (1 × 10⁹ Ω) would have very low conductivity (rubber, which is so resistive that it’s used as an insulator, has a resistance in the 1.00×10¹³ Ω range, or 10,000,000,000,000 Ω, AKA ten trillion ohms).

In general terms defined by the ESD Association, “conductive” is describes any flooring with a resistance of up to 1 million ohms. “Dissipative” is used for anything greater than 1 million ohms and up to 1 billion ohms.

ESD Flooring Type	Resistance (Ω) Range (Low End)	Resistance (Ω) Range (High End)
Static Conductive	–	1 × 10⁶
Static Dissipative	1 × 10⁶	1 × 10⁹

Unfortunately, these categories are so broad that they aren’t entirely useful.

Thankfully, the ANSI 20.20 specification helps clarify things for us. It indicates that the maximum resistance of the flooring and the person (measured together) should be less than 3.5 × 10⁹ohms.

The NPFA has also specified that flooring should have no less than 25,000 ohms resistance. Below this number, the conductivity of the floor is considered to be too high and therefore unsafe due to risk of electric shock and other hazards.

As you can see, neither the minimum resistance specified by the NFPA nor the maximum specified by ANSI 20.20 lines up perfectly with our terms for “static conductive” or “static dissipative” flooring.

So… we’re left with making a selection based upon the specific needs of your industry. What is the application of the flooring? Will it be used in a clean room? Will it be used in electronics manufacturing? What are the considerations around flammable materials?

Other factors will affect the decision as well. Will the humidity and temperature of the environment be maintained within specific parameters? Both will affect conductivity, not just in the floor, but in the environment as a whole. What other building materials will be used?

Additionally, when specifying the levels of conductivity in flooring, there is a diversity in testing and measurement that exists which will cause test results to vary widely depending upon the methodologies used. It’s important to understand how these measurements will affect the final outcome where conductivity is concerned.

The Bottom Line?

There are a number of factors involved in the decision when you’re selecting between static conductive or static dissipative flooring. Our ESD control experts will be more than happy to help walk you through the decision-making process and the range of options available to you — both from a performance standpoint and from an aesthetic one. Contact us today!

07 Sep

How Does ESD Flooring Work?

When it comes to controlling Electrostatic Discharge in a commercial setting, one of the most important areas to address is the flooring. The floor is one of the single biggest surfaces, and almost every piece of furniture, major equipment, and even people will come into contact with flooring surfaces on a regular basis.

How does this impact your choice of flooring?

Well, obviously certain materials in carpeting are known to generate static electricity when the carpet fibers rub up against other materials, like the rubber in the soles of workers’ shoes. Since we quite obviously don’t want the flooring to make the ESD problem worse, we can rule out carpet that contributes to the buildup of static electricity.

This means that we start to look at the materials in the other available choices to see how they impact static electricity buildup and discharge.

Flooring & Electrostatic Discharge Pathways

It’s been said that electricity always follows the path of least resistance, but this is not actually completely true. Electricity will follow all available pathways when “circuits” are created (intentionally or not). The flow of electricity will, however, prefer pathways that have a lower impedance (resistance to electricity).

ESD flooring serves to create a preferred pathway for the flow of electricity, allowing the build-up of static electricity in devices, personnel, and equipment to have an immediate pathway to grounding.

Depending upon the situation, ESD flooring choices include ESD carpeting, ESD conductive tiles, or ESD dissipative tiles.

In the case of conductive tiles or ESD carpeting, the flooring materials contain conductive elements (e.g. carbon lines or conductive yarn fibers) that transmit electrical current through the flooring materials. ESD carpeting options are made with a conductive backing that helps facilitate this, whereas ESD tile is laid using a specially made conductive adhesive to adhere it to the subfloor. Current is then transmitted to conductive tape or copper strips placed beneath the surface of the floor.

A static grounding terminal attaches one of our ESD carpet installations to a grounding point

From there, grounding is achieved by connecting the conductive materials below the ESD flooring directly to a grounding point, or by placing a special grounding tile at regular intervals which is, in turn, connected to a grounding point.

The ESD conductive tiles and ESD carpets are manufactured and tested to have minimal resistance to electrical current, which increases the likelihood that any static charge will pass through the flooring and on to ground instead of damaging sensitive equipment or igniting flammable or explosive substances.

ESD dissipative floors work in a similar fashion, but are engineered to have a higher resistance than flooring classified as “conductive.” This causes electricity to flow to ground in a slower, more controlled manner.

Which flooring should you choose? We’ll talk about that further in our next blog post. In the meantime, contact one of our static control experts to help you create the solution that’s perfectly tailored to your situation!

31 Aug

Common Sources of ESD Damage You May Have Overlooked

As we’ve talked about previously, often the sources of static electricity go completely unnoticed. This is because we humans can’t even detect a static charge until it gets up to about 3,000 volts. The problem is that sensitive electronics can be damaged by a charge down in the 100-volt range.

If you’re in the business of manufacturing printed circuit boards or other electronics, you already know how serious a problem electrostatic discharge in the work environment can be. But for the rest of us, we may not recognize just how big of a problem ESD can be, and how much it is affecting our critical devices.

Once you become aware, then you’ll want to start addressing the problem by setting up a static-free zone, or an ESD protected area (EPA).

One of the first and biggest areas that you’ll probably begin to address in more critical environments is the flooring itself. Putting in one of the many types of ESD floors will help carry static charges away to ground right through the floor, rather than allowing it to end up damaging your sensitive equipment.

Another method of controlling ESD involves using specially designed ESD shoes that will allow static charges to dissipate.

Using ESD flooring and ESD shoes addresses a major source of static discharge buildup.

But where else do static charges come from?

Believe it or not, the typical work environment is loaded with sources of static electricity. Here are some examples you may not have thought about:

a typical “scotch tape” dispenser: the tape itself builds up a static charge coming off the roll (which can be up to a few thousand volts!)and the dispenser is usually made up of insulating materials that can build up a charge
plastic baggies (for components) can have a few hundred to over 1,000 volts of static charge built up on them with simple handling.
plastic water bottles (or any plastic bottle containing liquid) can build up thousands of static volts of electricity
any other products made out of insulating, rather than conductive materials (plastic cups, bins, organizers, etc.)

As you can see, often the sources of static electricity are so close at hand, and so seemingly benign, that they’re very easy to miss.

What Can You Do About It?

Bringing static electricity under control at a given workstation can be accomplished using a few simple tools:

ESD work mats will carry the charge away from any conductive materials you set on them
ESD grounding straps or wrist straps allow the wearer to stay grounded at all times, preventing the buildup of a static charge on the human body
The use of monitors and meters will allow for quick and easy measurement of static buildup, which will help identify and eliminate sources of ESD before they become a problem

Need help setting up your ESD protected areas? Give us a call today, and one of our ESD control experts will be happy to provide all the help you may need!

24 Aug

What Causes Static Electricity?

Static electricity, the phenomenon responsible for electrostatic discharge, is responsible for everything from simple, often harmless effects like a child’s hair standing up on a playground slide to much more dangerous incidents like fires at the gas pump and even the Hindenburg disaster.

We’ve all experienced the shock of touching a doorknob—or perhaps even another person—after walking across carpeted floors, but perhaps few of us really understand what “static electricity” really is… and fewer understand what causes it.

What is Static Electricity?

“Static” electricity is latent electrification of an object. Unlike “current” electricity, which flows through substances, a “static” buildup involves acquiring an electrical charge which remains until it is discharged.

In the simplest of terms, “static electricity” refers to a positive or negative electrical charge. An object, or indeed a person, can build up excess electrons (a “negative” charge) or can lose electrons (a “positive” charge).

More specifically, the surface of an object is where this electrical charge resides.

How Does Static Electricity Build Up?

The most common means of a person or an object acquiring an electrical charge is a process known as “triboelectric” charging. Triboelectric is derived from the Greek, tribo- (‘rub’) and ēlektron (‘amber’), which is one of the earlier substances known to have been responsible for the “triboelectric” effect, and is thus the origin of the terms, “electron” and “electricity.”

As the Greek origins of the word imply, triboelectricity is often the result of rubbing, or friction. However, friction is not required to produce the charging effect.

In reality, simple contact followed by separation can produce an electrical charge in many substances. Amber and wool, for example, will produce triboelectricity when brought into contact with one another and then separated.

Other examples of substances known to produce the triboelectric effect:

glass and silk
rubber and fur
hair/skin and certain plastics & vinyls

All that is needed for the build-up of an electrical charge is contact, followed by separation. In this simple example, a woman starts fueling her vehicle, then gets inside. Presumably, all it took was contact between her shoes and the vehicle’s carpet, or perhaps her skin and the fabric on the seat, to produce a buildup of static electricity:

What Causes Electrostatic Discharge?

As you can see in the video above, the woman has picked up a static charge by contact with the interior of her vehicle.

A “discharge” occurs when the object (or person, in this case) which has built up a negative or positive surface charge comes into close proximity or contact with another object that has a different charge. In the video above, the woman comes into contact with metal (either in the pump or the vehicle itself) and a small spark (or electrical arc) is produced.

Given her close proximity to the fumes of the gasoline, the results are predictable.

A similar discharge occurs when you walk across a carpeted floor in shoes in rubber-soled shoes and then touch a doorknob or other metal.

The real problem for businesses comes in when that electrostatic discharge occurs near sensitive equipment. This type of discharge can produce immediate, catastrophic failure, or even minor damage that doesn’t produce failure for a long time to come.

In future blog posts, we’ll talk about various aspects of electrostatic discharge, and why prevention is so important.

In the mean time, remember that electrostatic discharge is the reason that you always want to place your gas can on the ground before filling it up. Your truck bed or carpeted trunk is a recipe for disaster!

15 Aug

Taming the Electrostatic Discharge Beast

Electrostatic discharge, the rapid (and often unforeseen) flow of electricity that results when two electrically charged objects come into contact with one another, is an incredibly common phenomenon that wreaks havoc to the tune of billions of dollars each year in costs.

Whether your business produces ESD-sensitive equipment, or uses ESD-sensitive equipment in your operation, chances are you are dealing with significant costs associated with ESD—whether you’re aware of it or not.

Most electronic equipment has some degree or another of sensitivity to electrostatic discharge, and of course it’s hard to imagine many situations in which we do not come into contact with electronics on a daily basis. In fact, we’re often not aware of the most basic scenarios in which we generate an electrostatic discharge in everyday life, including plugging a charged USB cable into a laptop or even touching a cellphone when we carry a charge.

The manufacturers of the most ubiquitous devices have been working for decades to reduce vulnerability to ESD, and yet the costs associated with it continue to skyrocket.

The Costs of ESD

Sometimes the costs associated with Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) are obvious. For manufacturers who produce integrated circuits (ICs) or any products that contain them, product failures are perhaps the most significant source of ESD costs.

Cisco estimates that the costs of ESD damage are:

1x the cost of assembly and labor if found during assembly,
10x the cost of assembly and labor if found during testing, and
100x the cost of assembly and labor if found at the customer site.

The problem is that ESD damage can be hard to detect. Even with more than $5 billion in costs associated with ESD each year, it is likely that the majority of true costs are not properly attributed to ESD.

In the event of catastrophic or complete failure of a given device subsequent to a known ESD event, responsibility for the failure is easy to discover. The problem is that human beings cannot detect the familiar ESD “arc” until approximately 3000 volts. The threshold for damage to sensitive circuits can be as low as 100 volts, meaning that the vast majority of electrostatic discharge events may be going unnoticed.

Even more insidious, however, is the latent damage that can be caused by electrostatic discharge. Often the damage produced by ESD isn’t discoverable until much later, meaning that the true cause of a product or system failure may not be known, and therefore cannot be accounted for in any meaningful way.

Killing ESD at the Source

Often, companies invest in reducing the effects of ESD rather than trying to stop the causes of it. Even so, return on investment can be measurably very high.

To truly gain a significant ROI, however, the investment must be made in preventing ESD by eliminating the causes of it, not just mitigating its effects.

In manufacturing or handling sensitive electronic equipment, creating an Electrostatic Discharge Protected Area is a great starting point, with all manner of ESD protection, including:

ESD flooring
Grounding devices like wrist straps
Grounded static dissipative work surfaces
ESD clothing and shoes
ESD packaging
Signage

Whether you’re designing manufacturing facilities, operating a production line, or interacting with electronic circuits at any level, we’re here to assist you with any and all of the questions you deal with. As experts in the prevention and elimination of ESD for more than 15 years, we have the expertise, know-how, and depth of products to help you solve any of your ESD challenges.

In the coming weeks and months, we’re excited to be able to begin to share our expertise with you via this blog, and we look forward to interacting with you here!