IC storage / anti-static foam

[Mark J. Blair]

Note that the clear IC tubes do *not* provide any protection against static electricity; they just don't generate any *additional* static charge from items rubbing against them (such as from the ICs jiggling around during shipping, rubbing against other items, etc.) like untreated plastics can. They aren't conductive enough to protect against external zaps.

The same goes for the pink antistatic bags; those don't create additional static charges during handling like plain plastic bags do, but they also don't protect their contents from external zaps. At all!

To protect from external charges, you can use things like the black foam for DIPs (which has a relatively high conductivity in order to keep the pins of an IC at the same potential), the silver bags (which protect contents *when sealed* by forming a Faraday cage around them), etc.

Here's a good video demonstrating the difference between anti-static/static-dissipative packaging (pink stuff, DIP tubes, etc.) vs. static *shielding* packaging (silver bags, black conductive bags, black ESD-shielding totes, etc.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imdtXcnywb8


-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/