Measurement technique developed to evaluate transient EMI in a photo bay with and without air ionization

A new technique for quantifying the magnitude and the rate of ESD-induced transient electromagnetic interference (ESD-EMI) was developed, and is presented along with results of measurements of the rate of such EMI with and without ionization in Photo Bay 2 at International SEMATECH. The rate of ESD-EMI events recorded in the bay was 30 times greater with the ionizers off than with them on. The technique used a very high sampling rate (4 GS/sec) digitizing oscilloscope, with a wide bandwidth (>1.5 GHz), and a histogram technique to acquire a spectrum of amplitudes of the transient events.