Using a Turn of a Meander Microstrip Line for ESD Protection.

This article describes a new approach to electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection based on usage of a turn of a microstrip meander line (ML). The proposed approach enables decomposing an ESD peak surge with the duration of about 4 ns into a sequence of smaller amplitude pulses. Using a quasi-static simulation of the meander turn time response to the excitation of the IEC 61000-4-2 standard ESD current source, we obtained the condition for such decomposition. In addition, we derived the condition for the overlapping of the additionally reflected odd mode pulse of the negative polarity on the even mode pulse to reduce the amplitude of the last pulse. As an example, the proposed approach is used in investigating the ESD pulse propagation along the ML with various parameters. We also found the optimal value of the turn length for the minimum output ESD voltage, which decreases as the distance between the ML half-turns decreases. The described approach and the formulated conditions provide the improvement of the protection against ESD by decreasing its magnitude by several times. The effectiveness of the new approach is confirmed by the electrodynamic simulation and prototype measurements. The new research results supplement the theoretical framework for ESD mitigation techniques and can be used in designing reliable, light-weight, low-cost, and radiation-resistant ESD protection devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]