Can ESD-protective garments screen static electric fields?

ESD-protective clothing is used by personal that are handling unprotected electronic products in the electronics manufacturing industry during the manufacturing phase. The main function of an ESD-protective garment is; to screen charges located on the normal clothing of personal, to prevent direct discharges from the same and not to cause any of the above-mentioned problems itself.

In this paper we discuss the ability of screening a static electric field for an ESD-protective garment. A phenomenological model of the system is presented and calculations are compared with experimentally obtained values. Fabrics with the following different types of conductive threads are considered: core conducting (CC), surface conducting (SC) and hybrid conducting (HC) using carbon/graphite as conducting element. All the fabrics have similar base fabric and grid density of the conductive threads. The screening ability of these three fabrics is; CC 68%, SC 77% and HC 82%, when they are compared to a thin homogeneous conducting film.