Having been in electronics (pre cmos) and then progressing into heavy industrial electrical controls all my life, and now retired.

It was ingrained into you as an apprentice under threat that you must always ground yourself before handling electronics.

But nowadays it never seems to come up in any 'beginners homebuild' books or even online.

I see YouTube videos of people repairing PCs and laptops with no grounding, and people breadboarding.

Is it not a requirement anymore? Are modern-day chips built with static protection in mind?

Or am I missing something that I should be taking note of?

 

hi gray,

Prevention of Static damage, protection methods for working with IC's are still valid.

As you say, there are so many slap-happy examples of improper handling on the Web, that a novice may think that ESD is not a problem, they usually find out the hard way.

E

https://resources.system-analysis.cadence.com/blog/msa2022-esd-precautions-and-proper-handling-
procedures-for-sensitive-electronics

Added a PDF.

 

Having been in electronics (pre cmos) and then progressing into heavy industrial electrical controls all my life, and now retired.

It was ingrained into you as an apprentice under threat that you must always ground yourself before handling electronics.

But nowadays it never seems to come up in any 'beginners homebuild' books or even online.

I see YouTube videos of people repairing PCs and laptops with no grounding, and people breadboarding.

Is it not a requirement anymore? Are modern-day chips built with static protection in mind?

Or am I missing something that I should be taking note of?

yep,

whilst in industry , anti static has moved on a long way from days of keep everything in tin foil ,
home electronics is the wild west

my thought is there is little real hone electronics nowadays,
very few people solder up components , this that do id say are mostly on here .
most electronics is plugging boards together , and software,

who makes the radio or cmos clock any more !

people preparing pcs without wrist straps and bench, are just lucky most of the time , as they are working on modules, they just replace..

 

hi gray,

Prevention of Static damage, protection methods for working with IC's are still valid.

As you say, there are so many slap-happy examples of improper handling on the Web, that a novice may think that ESD is not a problem, they usually find out the hard way.

E

https://resources.system-analysis.cadence.com/blog/msa2022-esd-precautions-and-proper-handling-
procedures-for-sensitive-electronics

Added a PDF.

That was a good bit of reading there. We always used to have wrist straps, a bit of cable, and a crocodile clip.

Never knew they should have a 1M ohm resistor in them though.

In the 1970's used to build everything at home from scratch; most never worked? I wonder why

 

hi gray,
The 1meg in the grounding wire was to limit grounding current.
Carpets are a common source of body ESD build up, you can get aerosol sprays for the carpets
E
OT: are you now retired?

 

Yes and glad to be retired, too stressful.

 

Having been in electronics (pre cmos) and then progressing into heavy industrial electrical controls all my life, and now retired.

It was ingrained into you as an apprentice under threat that you must always ground yourself before handling electronics.

But nowadays it never seems to come up in any 'beginners homebuild' books or even online.

I see YouTube videos of people repairing PCs and laptops with no grounding, and people breadboarding.

Is it not a requirement anymore? Are modern-day chips built with static protection in mind?

Or am I missing something that I should be taking note of?

Yes and no.

Most (not all) electronic components are now designed with very robust static protection. There are some applications where such protection would interfere with the device's functionality. So people can get away with mishandling what would normally be static-sensitive ICs with no apparent harm (and, truth be told, I have definitely been guilty of it myself).

On the other side of the ledger, whether it is safe to do so or not, it's not surprising that online videos would be rife with people doing things improperly, so don't use that as your guide of proper safeguards.

Also, notice that I said, "no apparent harm" earlier. You can damage a part without there being immediate and obvious damage. You can cause damage that changes its characteristics so that, while it still functions, it no longer functions per spec. You can also cause damage that reduces it's reliability and life expectancy. Most hobbyists won't notice these effects and, even if they actually cause problems, won't correlated it back to their unsafe handling practices.

 

I still always wear an ESD strap in the lab (all the time). HBM (and sometimes MM) clearance are still necessary in the reiterative IC design pipeline. You never know if the ESD protection elements of your circuit are enough against Murphy's law. Better safe than sorry.

 

Here is a summary as I see it:

1) ESD prevention is still rigidly practiced in all semiconductor industry supply chain, from production, handling, shipping, assembly.
2) ESD is a major concern at the device handling stage, particularly in temperate, low humidity, winter climates, homes, offices, factories with central heating.
3) ESD is more a problem at the device level and board assembly stage. It is less a problem at the finished appliance stage.
4) Hobbyist should continue to observe safe ESD practice by using grounded soldering stations, wrist straps, and at the very least, should touch a grounded metallic instrument before doing semiconductor work.
5) Semiconductor components, devices and boards should be stored in ESD safe packaging and containers and handled accordingly.