A Generalisable Component-Level ESD Failure Characterisation for TLP Measurements

Designing an electronic system to be robust against electrostatic discharges remains challenging. Components have to be characterised with respect to system-relevant soft-failures in addition to the commonly investigated hard-failures. A method to provide this information is proposed in this paper. The method is based on transmission line pulsing measurements with freely definable failure detection and processing routines, and is able to simultaneously check several failure criteria. This allows to adapt the measurements depending on the requirements of a random component and its surrounding system.