Considerations about the using of Cadence Software for simulation issues of electrostatic phenomena

The here presented paper reviews the problems of electrostatic discharges (ESD) in circuit industry and presents the standard models developed to characterize the performance of ESD protection-circuits. Electrostatic discharge is one of the most important reliability problems in the circuit industry considering that the static electricity is an electrical charge caused by the imbalance of the electrons to the surface of a material. This imbalance produces an electric field that can be measured and may influence the objects in the vicinity. In order to characterize the behavior of devices and objects in terms of electrostatic discharge, are mainly used three standardized models: Human Body Model (HBM), Machine Model (MM) and Charged Device Model (CDM). Just simple modeling is strongly preferred in terms direct application of real test voltages, being much cheaper. In accordance with the importance of chosen research field, we developed a significant number of trials, using Cadence Software, a program for modeling and simulation of electrostatic phenomena.