The measurement of transient electromagnetic field radiated by electrostatic discharge

With the rapid development of the electronics industry the threat of fields radiated by electrostatic discharge (ESD) to electronic equipment is becoming more and more dangerous. A custom short monopole antenna and test method to measure the ESD electric field is presented. A series of tests of the electric field radiated by real human body ESD have explicitly revealed how strong is the electromagnetic field generated by ESD. The result shows that the peak-peak ESD field in 10 cm by a human holding a metal pen with a potential of 2 kV discharging to ground is 410 V/m. The band of the field spectrum is extremely wide, ranging from several MHz to above 1 GHz. The experiments also show that the amplitude of the electric field radiated by ESD when holding a metal screw driver discharging to the ground metal is many times larger than that of the finger discharge directly to the ground.