Shiny Bags and Clunky Wristbands: How They Keep Your Components Safe!

2024-03-29 | By Antonio Velasco

As I've been teaching some students about embedded systems and robotics, a question that I've gotten multiple times was why all of the component bags were shiny. To be honest, prior to the last few months, I just thought that electronics suppliers were being a bit boujee with their bags and making them a little fancier. Let's go over what they're used for and go over some safety precautions!

What is Electrostatic Discharge (ESD)?

Electrostatic Discharge, or ESD, is when electricity spontaneously flows between two objects. Put simply, it's what happens when a charged object touches another object and transfers all of its static electricity. You may have experienced this when touching a metal handle and feeling a spark, or even touching an escalator belt as you walk onto it. Of course, the most popular example is when you slide your socks on a carpet and then "shock" your friend. You don't even see a spark, but it's strong enough for you to feel!

That being said, this shock can potentially harm your electronics and your components. As I did mention, there's not even a spark seen so it's pretty weak, but the components that you're working with are very small and precise. Especially with microcontrollers and smaller boards, this small spark can potentially damage or destroy them. In order to prevent this accidental and sudden flow of electricity, people employ a number of preventative strategies, such as the shiny packaging that comes with the components or the stylish bracelets that you'll see some people wearing.

Shiny Packaging: Antistatic Component Bags

You may have noticed that when buying components, they typically come in shiny bags--these are antistatic component bags.

Shiny Bags and Clunky Wristbands: How They Keep Your Components Safe!

They're thicker than normal bags and shield your components from static electricity. Essentially, the shiny part of the bag is a metallic layer meant to prevent electricity from entering the bag. Furthermore, a coating is applied to the outside of the bag to prevent further transfer of static energy. All of this together forms a bit of a Faraday cage--basically, an enclosed space that will block electromagnetic fields.

Shiny Bags and Clunky Wristbands: How They Keep Your Components Safe!

This works as, since it is surrounding an enclosure, the electric charges are spread amongst the entire area and thus cancel out (since it surrounds the entire thing). With bigger cages, you'll be able to dissipate bigger charges, but for our purposes of preventing a small amount of electricity, antistatic bags work perfectly.

Stylish Bracelets: ESD Wristband

Moving on, let's talk about the cool bracelets that you'll see people wear as they work with components. These are called ESD wristbands, or grounding wristbands. They're meant to take the static electricity that may be in your body and ground it or dissipate it. It takes whatever charge that may be contained in your body and dissipates it to an earth-ground.

Shiny Bags and Clunky Wristbands: How They Keep Your Components Safe!

Shown is an example of the wristband portion. On the metal bud on the outside, a lead would be attached for the electricity to flow out. The metal part on the inside touches your skin, conducting the electricity from you. A relatively simple concept--just having an attachment that will discharge you so that you won't damage a component that you touch.

Another place that you'll see people use these a lot is with microchips or in building computers, especially since the components are extremely small and expensive.

Moving Forward

Overall, protecting the components that you work with from antistatic electricity will keep them safe and save you money in the long run. Many industries require ESD control if you intend to work with electronics in your career, and it's important to make sure to follow these regulations. I've attached an example of an antistatic bag and an ESD wristband that DigiKey sells at the end of the blog. Whether you're packaging up a component to send away or working on an Arduino project, it's always a good idea to take precautions.