ESD Systems - Questions And Answers

Some partners are using conductive benches and they considered those benches as ESD safe. Beside operator safety on live conductors, what is the ESD awareness with this conductive benches ? - Anonymous, Zapopan, Mexico

The use of conductive benches for ESD control with semiconductors or electronic devices is not recommended. Conductive being defined as having less than 10 kilohms of resistance. The reason being, that with the introduction of any charged conductor to the conductive bench surface, you may experience an ESD event because of the fast energy transfer between two conductive materials. The other reason, personnel safety may also be a concern. You would want a mechanism to limit the potential current received an operator may experience to ground to about 250 microamps. Our dissipative mats would easily provide this safety on the bench surface. An ESD mat with a surface resistance over 1 megohm (1x10^6) is recommended.

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