Billions of dollars are lost each year because of damage caused by static electricity during the manufacture, assembly, use and repair of micro-electronic components and equipment.
Static electricity occurs anytime two dissimilar objects come together and then separate.
In our ordinary everyday movements we can build up thousands of volts of electricity. It can take fewer than a hundred volts to degrade or destroy micro-electronic devices. Often the degraded area of a component is so difficult to detect that it can pass quality control tests. In fact, industry analysts estimate that for every one catastrophic damage incident there are nine or tem more that become reliability problems in the field.