TECH BRIEF ESD Suppression Technologies ESD Suppression Basics with respect to product reliability. The “supplemental protection” includes the use of ESD suppressors. These technologies protect the circuit by “clamping” the transient voltage to a safe level, above the circuit operating voltage (3.3, 6, 12VDC, etc.).The energy that would have gone into the circuit (and caused damage) is dissipated by the ESD suppres- sor and the source of the ESD. 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 peripher- als), cell phones, PDA’s, flat panel LCD displays, and network hardware. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate how the ESD suppressors “re-routes” the ESD transient so that the chip is not damaged. Circuit Board Data Lines IC Energy that the circuitry would have experienced ESD Current Clamped Wavefor m V line Time (s) Figure 1. Electronic Device - ESD transient is conducted directly into the chip via an unprotected data line Figure 3. ESD waveform The trade-off for the chip designer is ESD protection versus die space. As more ESD protection structures are incorporated into the chip, its surv