Identification and visualization of electromagnetic coupling paths & nonlinear capacitors for ESD protection

The first topic of this dissertation focuses on developing methods to identify and visualize electromagnetic coupling paths. The basis of the approach is to utilize an analogy between electromagnetic energy flow and fluid flow. This allows one to apply the theories and algorithms of fluid dynamics to electromagnetics and thereby to visualize the electromagnetic energy flow. This in turn can be utilized to identify the electromagnetic coupling path.;The second topic of this dissertation investigates the nonlinearity of capacitors and suggests improved trade-off between electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection and data bandwidth by using the antiferroelectric (AFE) capacitors as ESD protection. The dielectric constant of AFE material increases with increasing voltage. The voltage dependence of X7R and AFE capacitors are measured using static and nanosecond transient measurements. The ESD protection effectiveness with different material capacitors are compared by simulation.