Shocking Technologies, ESD protection through VSD

We first covered Shocking Technologies at the beginning of 2008, when the company raised $4M in venture funding from Hercules Technology Growth Capital. Back then, very little information was available regarding what the company was pursuing, other than that it had something to do with conductive dielectrics. As it turns out, our guess that that company might be looking into electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection was right on. The conductive dielectric has been rebranded into a Voltage Switchable Dielectric (VSD) material, which the company defines as a “polymer nano-composite that behaves like an insulator (dielectric) during normal circuit operation and becomes conductive when the voltage across the VSD material increases beyond a predefined threshold voltage. The VSD material becomes an insulator again after the voltage drops below the threshold voltage.” The figure below shows the embedding of the VSD material such that it is in contact with the ground plane in the design.

Since the VSD material is embedded throughout the substrate, regardless where the high static charge enters and a high voltage pulse occurs, the excess current is shunt to ground within a nanosecond, according to Shocking Technologies. The VSD material can be integrated within a printed circuit board (PCB) to offer board level protection, or as mentioned beforehand, into the substrate in order to provide package level protection. Cell phone, portable electronics, memory device, and semiconductor companies have expressed interest in the technology recently according to company. Viking Modular Solutions introduced a CF card just the other week featuring VSD technology and it seems the investor community has taken notice as well, allowing Shocking Technologies to raise $13.2M in Series-B funding at the beginning of this month. With money in hand the company intends to expand rapidly, increasing its staff by 33% over the next few months and by over 50% over the course of a year - so if you’re looking for a job with an exciting startup now would be the time to apply.

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No.1 smart card

Does anyone know where I can find deep technical information about smart cards?. I'm doing a report for the company I'm working for.

Submitted by adamsmith411, on 2010-05-28 10:47:16

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