The Consequence of Dried-Out ESD Workstations and Solutions to Mitigate Hazards of Charge Board Effect on Mission Critical Flight Hardware!

Bob Vermillion, CEO

RMV Technology Group LLC

A NASA Industry Partner 

Moffett Field, CA

March 14, 2024

The risk of Charge Board Effect (CBE) on today’s ESD sensitive microprocessor driven SmallSats cannot be ignored!

CubeSats in the next decade may be as powerful as the original 2-to-3-ton satellites. Today’s implementation of the new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET) technology is a game changer extending Moore’s Law lifecycle for another decade.

One example is the Apple M1 Ultra microprocessor equivalent to 114 billion transistors. Adoption of this technological advancement will change ESD practices for Space & Defense and for the commercial sector.

Traditional NASA ESD worksurfaces may pass resistance to a groundable point (RTG) or point to point (RPP or RTT) resistance testing per NASA STD 8739.6B, Section 7. The risk, however, is that ESD workstations may charge up to several hundred or over a thousand volts on a dried-out workstation. Witness how CBE kills ESD Sensitive Devices!