Small electronic parts, bigger risks?

WATERTOWN, US: Smaller electronic components are creating greater risks for electronics manufacturers and mission-critical operations, according to a new study from NanoMarkets regarding the growing threat of ESD (electrostatic discharge).

As electronic parts become more powerful, circuits become smaller, reports NanoMarkets, leading analysts in the electronics industry. This reduces the room available for on-chip static protection, putting billions of dollars at risk if factories and end users of electronic equipment don’t protect their environments with products such as static-control flooring.

The increased vulnerability of electronics has increased the demand for better ESD products in the semiconductor industry, with ESD product sales expected to exceed $8 billion by 2015, adds a press note.

The ESD Association says this trend has implications for flooring applications that need to be fault-tolerant in electronic manufacturing plants, call centers, data centers, labs, hospitals, government, and other industries.

“This perfect ESD storm can have devastating consequences to the semi-conductor industry and mission-critical environments,” says Dave Long, president & CEO of Staticworx. Long cites “the inevitable continuation of Moore’s Law,” which maintains that the number of transistors in integrated circuits has doubled every year for the last 40 years.