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One Hundred Megohms

Glossary Term

One Hundred Megohms, or “One Hundred Meg,” equals one hundred million ohms or 1.0 x 10E8. The exponent 8 refers to the eight zeros after the 1. Staticworx recommends an electrical resistance measurement of 1 x 10E8 as the maximum upper level for an ESD flooring specification.

Note: Many ESD flooring manufacturers recommend electrical resistance measurements as high as 1.0 x 10E9 (1 Billion ohms or One Thousand Meg).

StaticWorx believes that resistance measurements higher than 1.0 x 10E8 gives the flooring material too narrow a margin of error, and that the 900-million-ohm gap between 100 million and 1 billion ohms is too large a jump in electrical resistance. If a material has a resistance of 1.0 x 10E8, or 100,000,000 ohms, environmental changes and other mitigating factors should have little or no effect on the floor’s electrical performance. If a material has a resistance of 1 x 10E9 when it’s installed and low RH reduces conductivity or its resistance deteriorates over time, the floor may no longer provide adequate ESD protection.

Walking Body Voltage

The static charge, in volts, generated by a person walking across the floor. Static charges that accumulate on the body discharge to the first object the person touches, potentially damaging or disrupting sensitive electronics. Learn about how ESD flooring works

Voltage Suppression

Voltage suppression occurs when an ESD-protective material, such as a static-dissipative table covering, suppresses static charges rather than dissipating charges to ground. For instance, an ESD laminate with a buried conductive layer will suppress the electrostatic field from a charged object, but is incapable of discharging static even when the charged object touches its surface.

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

Gases emitted from certain solids or liquids, including a variety of chemicals, which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. Concentrations are consistently higher indoors than outdoors: often up to ten times higher. Flooring should always be tested for VOC content by independent certification organizations like FloorScore and GreenGuard.

Triboelectric Series

A list of common materials, such as leather, nylon, wool, and paper, showing whether a material tends to give up or take on electrons when in frictional contact with other materials on the list. Those that give up electrons become positively charged, and materials that accept electrons become negatively charged. In the ESD industry, the

Triboelectric Charging

Whenever two objects with different electrical characteristics make contact and separate, the molecules in the two materials interact, forming an electrical bond. Separating the materials creates friction. This frictional force draws electrons away from one material and deposits an excess of electrons on the other, leaving a positive or negative electrical charge on both materials.

Total Cost of Ownership

The real cost of a product, encompassing the cost of the material, along with installation, maintenance, anticipated repairs and necessary monitoring. These hidden costs are often overlooked or ignored in the initial cost analysis, but they add up and over time can outpace the expense of owning a floor with a higher material cost. For

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