Erratic Nature of Product ESD Immunity Testing

Investigated Using a Dual TEM Cell

Kwok Soohoo, Andrew Rybak, Michael Wielgos

IBM Corporation, Poughkeepsie (NY), USA,

ksoohoo@us.ibm.com,
arybak@us.ibm.com
mjwielgo@us.ibm.com

Abstract — Product ESD immunity testing to meet

European EMC Directive is straight forward but
sometimes the outcomes can be quite surprising; for
example, indirect discharge can be more potent than
direct discharge and contrary to preferred method air
discharge causes failure whereas contact discharge
passes. One of the key factors responsible for the
surprises is the lack of information on the frequency
contents associated with those ESD events. In this paper
those ESD phenomena are investigated using a Dual
TEM Cell [1] connected to a spectrum analyzer
simulating product under test; the spectrum plots
collected from the different ESD test modes are then
examined to gain insights into those anomalies. Some
examples are given to demonstrate correlation between
the spectrum plots and the surprises encountered during
actual product testing.
I. INTRODUCTION
European Union (EU) has implemented ESD
immunity test requirement over 10 years ago and
since then more and more countries have adopted the
standard for consumer protection purpose by
imposing the minimum product ESD immunity
levels. The EU ESD Immunity Test Standard is EN
61000-4-2 [2] which is based on IEC [3] document
of equivalent number; it specifies air and contact
mode discharges and the use of horizontal and
vertical coupling planes for indirect discharges. For
products with metallic chassis contact mode and
direct discharges are the preferred methods while air
and indirect discharges are used for products with
non-metallic covers. The combination of the above
test modes make the life of a test engineer
complicated and surprises are the last thing he/she
needs. During product ESD immunity testing
indirect ESD discharge can sometimes be more
stressful however majority of the time it is not, the
same goes for air discharges. What causes these
anomalies?
II. IN SEARCH OF ESD ANOMALIES
Let’s examine the ESD discharge events regardless
of air or contact mode (direct or indirect) as seen from
a product view point. Associated with a discharge
event there will be current flowing on the outer metal
casing of the product, any aperture or high impedance
mating joint on the outer chassis will be excited by the
current flow around it and turned into a reverse cavity
slot antenna [4] which in turn reradiates the induced
electromagnetic field to the inside; in addition to the
transient current brought in by the external cables there
will be the added noise currents induced on the internal
cables and printed circuit board traces seen by the
circuits. When the combined noise currents exceed the
circuit’s noise threshold of tolerance it will cause an
ESD induced product error. If there is a way to
measure the internally induced electromagnetic field
then one can shed lights on the ESD anomalies. The
following test set-up is designed to provide a method
to observe the induced electromagnetic field inside a
simulated product chassis.
III. MEASUREMENT METHOD
To be able to measure internal induced
electromagnetic field produced by an outside ESD
event a DTC (Dual TEM Cell) is used. The bottom
half of the DTC is strictly used as ESD discharge path
and both terminals are covered with either a 50 Ohm
terminator or metal end cap. Only the top cell is used
for receiving purpose. A grounding strap is connected
to the bottom cell paint free area with the use of
conductive copper tape to control the ESD return
current path. Figure 1 below shows the ESD noise
spectrum measurement set-up:

17th International Zurich Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, 2006 453

17th International Zurich Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, 2006

Experiment 4: Contact mode indirect ESD

spectrum plot of a leaky enclosure; 4KV Contact
mode ESD injection to VCP which in turn coupled
noise to DTC with one missing side gasket.
Experiment 5: Air discharge mode indirect ESD
spectrum plot of a leaky enclosure; 8KV Air
discharge mode ESD injection to VCP which in turn
coupled noise to DTC with one missing side gasket.

Fig. 1. Equipment set-up (ESD Gun, DTC, VCP & ESI40)
Figure 1 shows the DTC (Model TR17302 by
Advantest) in the fore ground with the ESD simulator
(Keytek ESD simulator model MZ-15/EC) behind it.
The top cell of the DTC is connected to the Rohde &
Schwarz ESI40 EMI Test Receiver and next to it is the
VCP (vertical coupling plane: 0.5 x 0.5 meter
aluminum plate). High, low and medium frequency
ferrite cores were used to suppress ESD noise current
from riding on the receiver cable. There are 2 ESD
injection points; first one is into the backside of the
metal end cap of lower TEM Cell and second point is
into the VCP; the ESD current’s return path is via the
ground strap connected on the front side between the
top and bottom cells or the middle of the VCP. The
VCP is isolated from the DTC using a ¼” thick fiber
glass strip. The purpose of the VCP is to simulate
indirect ESD (coupled noise) received by the product
chassis caused by adjacent ESD event. The following
series of experiments were conducted to understand the
induced frequency spectrum contents and amplitudes
inside the DTC resulting from different ESD injection
modes and boundary conditions.
V. TEST RESULTS
The data plots shown in Figures 2 to 6 were taken
from 0 to 2 GHz frequency range and the data
represent the induced signal on the upper TEM Cell
from various ESD modes. The spectrum analyzer was
in max. hold mode during the ESD injection. One
minute was used for contact mode discharges at 20 Hz.
Over 200 discharges were needed for the air discharge
mode ESD injection to fill the screen with enough
spectral lines; the recharge rate of the ESD simulator
was set at 20 Hz for quick recovery with only one air
discharge per injection. The data plots in Figures 2 to
4 were collected under direct ESD into the bottom
TEM Cell end cap and plots in Figures 5 and 6 were
taken with ESD injection to the vertical coupling
plane.

IV. EXPERIMENTS

Experiment 1: Contact mode ESD spectrum plot

of a well shielded enclosure; 4KV Contact mode
ESD injection to a fully shielded DTC (conductive
gaskets on all 4 sides of the 3.5” x7.5” opening
between the upper and lower cells). The DTC is
simulating a perfectly shielded product chassis.
Experiment 2: Contact mode ESD spectrum plot
of a leaky enclosure; 4 KV Contact mode ESD
injection to DTC with one 3.5” missing side gasket to
simulate product chassis “defect” (aperture between Fig. 2. Contact mode ESD spectrum plot of a well shielded
screw or weld spacing for instance). enclosure
Experiment 3: Air discharge mode ESD spectrum
plot of a leaky enclosure; 8KV Air discharge mode
ESD injection to DTC with one missing side gasket.

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 17th International Zurich Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, 2006
Fig. 3. Contact mode ESD spectrum plot of a leaky enclosure
Fig. 4. Air discharge mode ESD spectrum plot of a leaky
enclosure
VI. DISCUSSION
Notice there are drastic differences in the frequency
plots between the different discharge modes. This is
the most influencing factor in determining product
sensitivities since the most vulnerable circuits usually
are in the data clocking areas; the presence of strong
noise frequency spectrum near the clock frequencies
will degrade the signal level due to noise
superposition. The spectrum plots have to be
interpreted with the test fixture limitations in mind
since the apertures also acts as filters in responding to
external board band noise bombardment resulting from
an ESD pulse. The frequency contents and amplitudes
455
Fig. 5. Contact mode indirect ESD spectrum plot of a leaky
enclosure
Fig. 6. Air discharge mode indirect ESD spectrum plot of a
leaky enclosure
of the plots will be different for different aperture sizes
however that is the reality; the test set-up is simulating
product chassis with both intentional and unintentional
openings. The bottom line is that each product for a
given/fixed ESD event will see a different set of
frequency spectrum because of the unique apertures.
That is why there are surprises in product ESD
immunity testing due to the complex and unknown
noise spectrum resulting from box level filtering. Let’s
examine some of the ESD anomalies:
x Why is air discharge mode ESD sometimes
more potent than contact mode ESD?
Figure 3 data plot (contact mode) shows
that on the average the amplitude of the
frequency spectrum is higher than Figure 4
17th International Zurich Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, 2006
(air discharge mode) however there are a
few frequencies which show just the
opposite. If a product happened to be
sensitive to those frequencies then the
outcome will be unpredictable.
x Why is indirect ESD sometimes more
potent than direct discharge? Comparing
the spectrum plots between Figures 3 and 5
one can easily see that there are more
frequency contents and higher amplitudes
in quite a few areas in the indirect ESD
plot. Therefore for this particular DTC and
VCP set-up the indirect ESD appears to be
more potent across most frequencies.
VII. EXAMPLES OF PRODUCT ESD TEST ANOMALIES
One of the recently available IBM large main frame
computers was having problem meeting contact mode
ESD during compliance verification test. The system
has to meet concurrent maintenance requirement
(system running while redundant failing parts are being
serviced). The ESD test involved discharging into
internal processor node (a metal chassis housing the
central electronic complex) under contact mode; the
anomaly showed up when the node under test would
pass the test when subjected to direct injection but
failed when the adjacent node is being tested.
Examining the spectrum plot on Figure 5 shows that
the contact mode ESD application to a real close
vertical coupling plane provided much stronger
induced noise spectrum than direct contact mode ESD
injection as seen on Figure 3. Failure investigation
found that some of the mating gaskets were not large
enough due to tolerance problem with the chassis;
replacing them with bigger gaskets resolved the ESD
problem. The system went from 2KV contact mode
failure to passing at over 15KV. The passing criteria
for contact mode ESD is 4KV however for curiosity
sake we took the ESD gun to its limit at slightly over
15KV.
Another example of test anomalies occurred during
an x-series IBM server (comparable to a personal
desktop computer) ESD immunity test; since the
server is of metal chassis construction therefore the
preferred method of ESD test is the contact mode.
Contact mode testing however passed at 4KV criteria
but the application of 8KV air discharge resulted in
computer failure (screen locked up) and only power on
456
reset can restore the operating system. Root cause
investigation revealed that the I/O ports printed circuit
board chassis contact springs were not touching ground
stemmed from out of spec. part (bending spring angle
was a few degrees off). Correcting the contact
problem enabled the server to pass the 8KV air
discharge. In this particular case air discharge is
superior to contact mode discharge since it found
actual defect. Again the mystery lies with the
unknown frequency spectrum as seen inside the
chassis.
VIII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
If one examined the contact mode ESD vs. the air
discharge mode ESD frequency spectrums from
Figures 3 and 4 respectively the contact mode plot at
most frequencies is higher except for the frequency
cluster at the end of the spectrum plot; in this
frequency range the air discharge mode is higher
therefore the products with clock speed running closed
to the higher frequency clusters would be more
vulnerable to air discharge. If you are not aware of the
high frequency behavior of the air discharge then you
are in for another surprise. In view of the variability
of the frequency spectrums among the different modes
of ESD testing one can only conclude that product
ESD immunity testing is a complicated business and
each mode of discharge has its merit and there should
not be any preferred method over the other such as
contact mode over air discharge mode with exposed
metal chassis. You may be surprised that air discharge
mode can save your company from shipping defective
products.
REFERENCES
[1] Perry F. Wilson and M. T. Ma, “Shielding effectiveness
measurements with a dual TEM cell,” IEEE Trans.
Electromagn. Compat., vol. EMC-27, no. 3, pp. 137-142, Aug.
1985.
[2] European Union Standard EN 61000-4-2:1995
“Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). Testing and
measurement techniques. Electrostatic discharge immunity test.
Basic EMC publication,” ISBN 058024482 2
[3] International Electrotechnical Commission Standard IEC
61000-4-2 “Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) - Part 4-2:
Testing and measurement techniques - Electrostatic discharge
immunity test”
[4] Arlon T. Adams, “Flush Mounted Rectangular Cavity Slot
Antennas-Theory and Design,” IEEE Trans. Antennas and
Propagation, vol. ap-15, No. 3, pp. 342-351, May 1968