Smaller Electronics Increase Need for ESD Floors

Watertown, MA, June 2, 2010--Smaller electronic components are creating greater risks for electronics manufacturers and mission-critical operations, which calls for greater use of static-control flooring and other precautionary tactics.

A study by NanoMarkets outlines the growing “invisible threat” of ESD (electrostatic discharge).

According to NanoMarkets, a leading analyst in the electronics industry, as electronic parts in computers and other devices become more powerful, circuits also become much smaller, moving from micron-sized to microscopic nano-sized.

This continued miniaturization reduces the room available for on-chip static protection.  As a result, billions of dollars are at risk if factories and end users of electronic equipment don’t protect their environments with anti-static products such as fault-tolerant, static-control rubber flooring.

The report asserts that the increased vulnerability of electronics, including handheld devices, has significantly increased the demand for better ESD products in the semiconductor industry, with sales of ESD products expected to exceed $8 billion by 2015.

In response to the report, industry sources such as the ESD Association state that this trend has particular implications for flooring applications that need to be fault-tolerant (with guaranteed ESD production) in environments such as electronic manufacturing plants, call centers, data centers, server rooms, labs, flight control towers, hospitals, the government sector and other industries.

“This is a perfect ESD storm that can have devastating consequences to the semi-conductor industry and mission-critical environments,” says Dave Long, president & CEO of Staticworx, the nation’s largest supplier of ESD flooring and a company featured in the report.

“Electronic devices, once capable of withstanding several hundred volts of static electricity discharge, can no longer handle 50 volts. So it takes much less to zap them than ever before.”