$8 Billion at Risk as Need Increases for Anti-Static Flooring
Watertown, MA, May 25, 2010—Smaller electronic components are creating greater risks for electronics manufacturers and mission-critical operations.  That is the upshot of a dramatic new study from NanoMarkets regarding the growing “invisible threat” of ESD (electrostatic discharge). 

According to NanoMarkets, a leading analyst in the electronics industry, as electronic parts in computers and other devices become more powerful, circuits also become much smaller, moving from micron-sized to microscopic nano-sized.  This continued miniaturization reduces the room available for on-chip static protection.  As a result, billions of dollars are at risk if factories and end users of electronic equipment don’t protect their environments with anti-static products such as fault -tolerant, static-control rubber flooring. 
The report asserts that the increased vulnerability of electronics, including handheld devices, has significantly increased the demand for better ESD products in the semiconductor industry, with sales of ESD products expected to exceed $8 billion by 2015.  

In response to the report, industry sources such as the ESD Association state that this trend has particular implications for flooring applications that need to be fault-tolerant (with guaranteed ESD production) in environments such as electronic manufacturing plants, call centers, data centers, server rooms, labs, flight control towers, hospitals, the government sector, and other industries. 

A Perfect Storm
“This is a perfect ESD storm that can have devastating consequences to the semi-conductor industry and mission-critical environments,” says Dave Long, president & CEO of Staticworx, the nation’s largest supplier of ESD flooring, and a company featured in the report. “Electronic devices, once capable of withstanding several hundred volts of static electricity discharge, can no longer handle 50 volts.  So it takes much less to zap them than ever before.” 

Long adds, “Without the correct anti-static flooring in place, organizations risk significant damage and lost revenue due to equipment failure, downtime, low production yields, missed communication signals, data corruption, and expensive warranty claims.” 

Long cites “the inevitable continuation of Moore’s Law,” which maintains that the number of transistors placed in integrated circuits has doubled every year for the last 40 years.  “This trend will only make the problem intensify,” he says. 

Faulty Specs, Costly Errors
Of particular concern are the numbers of static-control floors in multiple environments that are installed without consideration of charging properties, according to Ted Dangelmayer, CEO, Danglemeyer Associates, a leading analyst in...