The Case for Measurement and Analysis of ESD Fields in Semiconductor Manufacturing

A destructive Charged Device Model electrostatic discharge event can happen in semiconductor manufacturing and should be detectable from radiation that results from collapse of an electric dipole. The analytically describable radiation field pulse of CDM can be readily produced with a new instrument (CDM Event Simulator or CDMES) that creates dipole collapse at will. A coaxial monopole E-field antenna's transfer function gives the antenna signal in near-field, and experiments compare well with theory. These and other instruments for CDM ESD monitoring and process control are described in a newly-issued patent, reviewed here.