Line Protection Devices

Building an ESD-Safe Packaging Environment - from the Ground Up.<br><br>"Smaller and faster" is the mantra of today's electronics design engineer. Unfortunately, it's also the recipe for heightened electrostatic discharge (ESD). The smaller and faster the device, the higher the ESD sensitivity. And, simply put, that's what all the static is about.<br><br> ESD threatens product quality and reliability, and impacts everyone from the component manufacturer to the end user. In fact, ESD damage costs the electronics industry billions of dollars each year. That's enough to shock manufacturers into taking a closer look at how their devices are produced, assembled, packaged, and shipped. tech news

Cooling solutions can range from hardening critical components, such as industrial computers, to enclosing all sensitive electronic components in a NEMA-12 enclosure. Designers must remember that the life of the electronics depends on the environment in which they are housed. The maximum operating temperature of typical electronic components in factory environmentssuch as uninterruptible power supplies, hubs, and motor drivesis 40 to 50. tech news

The primary purpose of packaging any electrical or electronic equipment is to provide protection from physical damage, mechanical forces, and atmospheric or chemical contamination that may exist in a typical operating environment. Packaging has been defined in a broad sense to not only include the materials and technologies required to provide electronic components with physical protection and electronic connections, but also to include system architecture and partitioning approaches, power management, thermal management, data flow and timing, and input/output interfaces tech news

A new method for sputter deposition of an insulating material on a substrate isdescribed, which offers numerous advantages over previous techniques such as dual magnetron sputtering. The new approach uses a single target, whose surfaces, through the use of alternating power, are kept free from unwanted charging and resultant arcing.The system also does not suffer from the "disappearing anode" effect, and so can be operated continuously in a production environment. This is accomplished through use of an ac powersupply and a novel anode and circuit configuration, which uses the plasma itself as a rectifier to convert the applied alternating power to dc power for the single cathode. The system isdescribed in detail and preliminary experimental results are presented. tech news

In some applications it is desirable for the coil casing to be gas tight. This means that the gas stream passing through the fins is contained within the outer perimeter of the case flange. In these situations, the degree of containment must always be defined. Sometimes, the intent is merely to avoid major leakage of the internal gas flow. In other cases, however, it is critical that there be absolutely no cross-contamination between the internal and external environments. tech news