ESD protection device safeguards medical applications

3rd March 2017

Alice Matthews

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Datasheet

The MAX30034 defibrillation protection device from Maxim Integrated Products targets medical equipment such as defibrillators as well as ECG diagnostics and monitoring systems. It protects against defibrillation pulses and electrostatic discharge (ESD). Compared to existing approaches and components, the company claims that it simplifies design, provides greater than 75% space savings, and trims the bill of materials, all while improving performance.

Designers of defibrillators and ECG monitors face a challenge, as their ECG input amplifiers must withstand high-voltage pulses for cardiac resuscitation. These pulses can easily damage the sensitive electronic circuitry which captures the millivolt level heart signals. Preventing this damage has required a three-layer, multi-component approach combining a per-channel Gas-Discharge Tube (GDT) and/or Transient-Voltage Suppression (TVS) device, as well as ESD-protection diodes. Further, leakage current (a critical parameter) is relatively high, at about 1-2nA.

Maxim's four-channel MAX30034 defibrillation protection device uses a topology from an advanced semiconductor process to absorb and harmlessly redirect these high-energy pulses away from sensitive circuitry. This small and robust device needs only two external pairs of resistors for each channel to provide design simplicity, smaller overall size and lower leakage current. The MAX30034 replaces the primary-level GDTs and/or TVSs, as well as secondary-level ESD diodes which are the conventional solutions for mandated circuit protection. The device can withstand over 100,000 defibrillation pulses without failure and still maintain a leakage current under 10pA (100x less than GDT/TVS-based approaches).

Key features:

Ease of Design: A single, tiny IC, and two external resistor pairs per channel are all that is needed
Robust: Leakage current is 100x less than GDT/TVS-based approaches even after 100,000 5kV pulses
Small: Replaces complicated primary, secondary, and ESD protection solutions for greater than 75% space savings; 3x5mm µMAX package (0 to 70°C operating temperature range)

“Customers need innovative, tightly focused components like this,” said Andrew Baker, Executive Director for Industrial and Healthcare at Maxim Integrated. “It completely changes the component solution to the long-standing challenge of protecting the medical device against a defibrillation pulse.”