2017-06-23

• I created plots of the E field and potential from my rough model of the ESD. This model has 1mm electrode arm widths and spacings, the length of each arm is 16 mm, and the resulting total size is 38mm x 20 mm x 0.1 mm. One comb has ten arms while the other has nine to match the actual ESD currently in use in the lab. 
• I set the ten arm comb to a potential of 100 V and the other to ground. I then used physics controlled mesh with an extremely fine element size to computer the simulations. With mesh sizes larger than extra fine, there was clearly non-physical error in the electric field and potential graphs that appeared as inexplicable field lines, spikes, and coarseness in the plots. 
• To create readable plots of the potential I created a Cut Plane in the center of the ESD perpendicular to both the arms and the plane of the device. The plots are attached with a milimeter length scale. I created a filled contour plot of the potential that is very clean, I tried a couple of different options for the electric field because it is harder to represent well. I created a contour plot for the norm of the electric field as well as superimposing a streamline plot of the field lines over that. Everything behaves generally as expected though I do suspect the spikes in electric field at the edges of each electrode are due to the fact that they are sharp corners and not smooth edges.