Secondary Discharge during System Level ESD Tests

By means of two examples, this work describes the influence of secondary discharge events during system level ESD testing on the failure threshold and the failure behavior of the involved electronic circuits. The first system is a kind of remote control, which did not pass the qualification by showing an increased current consumption. The second example is an automotive keyless entry controller, which failed in the field by entering a sleep mode after facing a discharge event. In both cases it was necessary to measure in-situ the discharge current in order to analyze the behavior in more detail.