System-Level ESD/EMI Protection Guide

Because electrostatic discharge (ESD) is common in electronic circuits, a device that provides protection from the undesirable effects of ESD must be included in the circuit design. Designing advanced ESD protection structures is becoming more and more challenging with the system bus and I/O operating more often in high-speed mode. Traditional methods of ESD protection include Zener diodes, metal oxide varistors (MOVs), transient-voltagesuppression (TVS) diodes and regular CMOS or bipolar clamp diodes. At higher data rates, these methods can cause distortion and deterioration of the signal integrity. Texas Instruments offers several types of ESD protection for high-speed data rates and for diode array chips for ease of design.