I'm working on a heated glove project that uses a Buck-Boost converter to step-up/step-down the voltage across the heating element. This is something that has just occurred to me, but I'm not sure if my fabric will cause any ESD issues. The fabric itself will be sewed to a polyester glove liner inside a fleece glove, so ESD may or may not be present. The PCB itself will be coated with a conformal silicon coating and placed into the inside padding of the glove, but I feel that the DC/DC converter IC could still get damaged from possible static of the fabric discharging into the output pin of the IC.
So would this be a situation where a ESD diode should be used? And if so, should it be used with a DC/DC converter?
Best Answer
The DC-DC has a very low output impedance due to its filter capacitor, so it’s not likely to be vulnerable to ESD.
ESD protection is generally applied to signals that go to the outside world. Sometimes it’s used on external power inputs too as a precaution. Your heated glove isn’t either one of those.