ESD –Electrostatic Discharge– is the fast discharge of static charges between materials that are on different potentials. These static charges are typically induced through friction of materials.

An example of ESD is the electric shock that you feel when touching a door knob, after walking over a carpet on a dry, cold winter day. The friction between the carpet and your shoes induces static charges that can only leak away slowly, causing a potential build-up on your body. When you reach the door knob, these charges will redistribute over the materials at other potentials, creating a spark. Order of magnitude: build-up of many kilo volts, peak currents of amperes and time constants in the order of 100 nanoseconds.

These discharges, if applied to integrated circuits (IC's) can create failures and production loss. To ensure working devices, prevention of charge build-up and on-chip protection strategies are both needed. To address the latter Sarnoff Europe licenses on-chip ESD protection solutions for a broad range of IC-technologies.

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