8 Oct
2012
8 Oct
'12
8:07 a.m.
On Oct 8, 2012, at 10:21 AM, barythrin at gmail.com wrote:
That was my similar confusion with esd bags though. At
first I thought they weren't conductive but later found they were which just makes me
think itd be similar to foil discharge.
They are conductive with very high impedance, which is important for
ESD; as has been pointed out, straight-up foil will keep the pins at
the same potential, which is good, but it won't keep a direct shock
to the foil from going to the die if it's sitting at a different
potential. Rubber ESD mats at least tend to be a few megohms of
resistance, and I would suspect that the metallized Mylar is most
likely fairly close. It's certainly not highly conductive.
Are tubes not good or is it that most folks don't
have plastic ic tubes? (I fall into the latter category but I don't have any stock of
ics to protect either).
Depends on the tubes. Lots of them are "ESD Protected" or some such,
but I've never been able to determine exactly what that means. The
tubes at least tend to keep you from touching the pins directly,
which covers a great deal of ESD problems (also bent pins, etc).
- Dave