ESD Suppression Technologies

Integrated circuits (IC's) and application specific integrated circuits (ASIC's) are manufactured with various levels of ESD protection incorporated into the silicon die itself.This protection circuitry is designed onto the chip to maximize yields in the chip foundry and in the board manufacturing facility. Examples of these chips (which are the "brains" of today's electronic products) include microprocessors, USB transceiver chips, IEEE 1394 controllers, and video graphics chips.The are used in a host of devices such as computers (and peripherals), cell phones, PDA's, flat panel LCD displays, and network hardware. The trade-off for the chip designer is ESD protection versus die space. As more ESD protection structures are incorporated into the chip, its survivability is increased, but less space is available for functional circuitry, or the chip has to be made larger. In today's electronic equipment, the overriding philosophy is "smaller is better". So a limited amount of space will be sacrificed for ESD protection.