The primary purpose of a shield is to block electromagnetic radiation. This includes both radiated emissions and radiated susceptibility.

In fact, most of the time a shield behaves in a reciprocal manner -- what works for one direction works equally well for the other. The exceptions are subtle, and will be ignored for now. Shields can be applied at different levels. The most common for electronic equipment is at the "box" level, but shielding can also be employed at the component, board, or even systems level. In the latter case, think of shielded rooms. In fact, multiple levels of shielding are quite common. You don't need to depend on just one shield for all your EMI protection. Shielding performance is traditionally defined as "Shielding Effectiveness", or SE. This is the ratio of the field level before the shield is in place, divided by the field level after the shield is in place. It is customary to express this parameter in deciBels. The number should always be zero (no shielding) or positive. (If negative, you must be creating energy. Quick -- patent it!) As with many EMC issues, there is a lot of duality with shielding. Two modes - reflection and absorption Two design issues - materials and mechanical Two field concerns - near field and far field Two frequency concerns - low frequency and high frequency Two impedance concerns - low (magnetic) and high (electric) With all these variables, it is no wonder one shield design does not work for all cases. All of the above lead to thinking of shielding in three regimes - magnetic, electric and electromagnetic. Here is a curve from a military handbook showing the SE of copper. Notice the two modes and three regimes. Don't panic -- we'll look at this in more detail to help you decode the mysteries of shielding.

Figure 1 - Shielding Effectiveness (SE) of Copper As you can see, there are a number of things to consider when designing an EMC shield, both electrical and mechanical. If you need shielding, it is not enough to just throw it over the wall to the mechanical engineers. You need to be involved in the design decisions too. We'll explore all of these topics in more detail in future posts. We'll also augment these with practical design guidelines along with our favorite shielding "rules of thumb." The first shielding decision is usually about materials. Do we need thick steel or mu-metal, or will a thin shield or even conductive paint suffice? Well, it depends... To better understand this issue, we'll delve into basic shielding theory. Don't panic -- we won't be deriving Maxwell's famous equations or bogging you down in electromagnetic field theory. Rather, we'll use a simple theory developed in the 1930's by Dr. Sergei Shelkunoff that still serves us very well almost a century later. If you look at the shielding diagram in the previous post, you can see that prior to Shelkunoff, it must have been very difficult to figure out what was going on. Did shielding increase or decrease with frequency? Was it linear or exponential? What was the rate of change? The answer, common in the EMI world, was "It depends..." Shelkunoff proposed a simple transmission line model for shielding -- specifically a lossy transmission line. This resulted in two major mechanisms, reflection (R) and absorption (A). He also added a fudge factor for reflections through a thin shield that he dubbed B.

The resulting top level equation was rather elegant: SE (dB) = R(dB) + A (dB) + B The mechanisms are illustrated in Figure 1.

Incidentally, since B is relatively small for most EMI issues, most of us just ignore it. (It can be important, however, for very thin shields or at optical frequencies.) As such, we'll focus on the two remaining shielding mechanisms, R and A. Reflection - This is a surface mechanism, and is the result of the mismatch (transmission line theory) of the barrier impedance and the wave impedance. The former is simply the surface impedance, given in Ohms/square, while the latter is the ratio of the magnitudes of the electric and magnetic fields. In free space, the wave impedance is 377 Ohms, but at very low frequencies (such as 50/60 Hz) the wave impedance may be drastically altered by the circuit impedance. Since the barrier impedance for metals and metallic coating is often measured in milliOhms, you can see we have a huge mismatch at higher frequencies. As a result, reflection is the primary mechanism for shielding at radio frequencies (RF) above 10 kHz. Even thin coatings like conductive paints can provide 60-80 dB or more of shielding. Absorption - This is a volume mechanism, and is the result of loss through the shield (lossy transmission line theory), and is the result of skin depths. The loss is exponential. One skin depth results in 8.68 dB (one neper) of loss, two skin depths in 17.4 dB of loss, etc. Since we usually don't need absorption for RF frequencies, any added absorption is a bonus. At power frequencies with high currents (low impedance fields), the reflection is minimal so you need absorption. Furthermore, skin depths are hard to come by at low frequency. At 60 Hz, you need at least 3-4 inches of aluminum to start to have even a small effect. So what to do?

Well, you can boost the skin depth by permeability. The improvement is proportional to the square of the relative permeability. Thus, 0.1 inch of steel (ur= 1000) gives the same absorption as about 3 inches of aluminum. This is why we use steel (or other permeable materials) for shields around power supplies or around devices that are sensitive to power line magnetic fields. The bottom line -- the two mechanisms often drive our choice of shielding materials. At RF frequencies (above 10 kHz) thin conductive coatings are usually fine. For power frequencies (50/60/400 Hz) with high currents, thick permeable materials are often required. In the next post, we'll start to look at the mechanical issues of shielding, such as how seams and other discontinuities affect RF shielding. These are the common limitations of RF shielding. We'll also share some of our favorite rules of thumb. There are two ways to destroy a high frequency shield - seams and penetrations. As discussed in the previous article, even thin conductive materials work well for frequencies above about 10 kHz. Thus, the weak points are mechanical rather than materials. Building a high frequency shield is like building a wooden water tank. Once the planks are thick enough, the leaks occur at seams, joints, penetrations, and even knotholes. And even a small hole can be a problem -- drill a inch hole in the bottom of the tank, and eventually all the water leaks out. Incidentally, the "planks" don't need to be thick for high frequency EMC shielding, as long as they are conductive. Obviously, wood doesn't work for EMC, but aluminum foil is very effective, along with surface treatments like conductive paint or plating. Remember, however, you still may need the "thick conductive planks" for low frequency magnetic field shielding (60 Hz and harmonics). Before we go further, we need to look at some simple physics. Although the water tank analogy is useful, it falls apart in several ways. Here are a couple of key points: For seams, the longest dimension is critical -- NOT the area. Unlike water, a six inch seam will leak the same as a six inch hole under worst case conditions. The difference is that the seam will be highly polarized, while the hole will not. When designing an EMC enclosure, we need to be pessimistic. After all, Murphy will make sure that the worst case will occur. For penetrations, the depth of penetration is critical, NOT the hole size. If a wire, cable, or even a pipe extends beyond the EMC shield and is NOT shorted to the shield, the extensions act like antennas connected by a coaxial cable. For example, carrying wires or cables through a hole to a connector on the circuit board can completely destroy a shield at high frequencies. A good rule of thumb for seams and penetrations is the "1/20 wavelength rule." Antenna designers often use this guideline as a practical limit when making small

antennas. You don't need a half wavelength (or even a quarter wavelength) to support electromagnetic radiation -- 1/20 of a wavelength will still do a credible job. As EMC designers, we're trying to do just the opposite -- that is, NOT design antennas into our shields. Yet, that is what happens. The seams look like slot antennas, and the penetrations look like monopole antennas. Both can radiate (leak) a surprising amount of energy at high frequencies. Most EMC engineers use a1/20 of a wavelength as a starting point, but even that only provides about 20 dB (10X) reduction. If you need 40 dB (100X) this reduces to 1/200 wavelength, and 60 dB (1000 X) reduces to 1/2000 wavelength. You can quickly calculate physical dimensions using this formula, based on the speed of light in free space: Frequency (MHz) x Wavelength (meters) = 300 For example, at 100 MHz a wavelength is 3 meters, so a 15 cm seam or penetration (about six inches) provides 20 dB of shielding. If you need 40 dB, that reduces to 1.5 cm, and if you need 60 dB, that further reduces to 1.5 mm. It's even worse at 1 GHz, where a wavelength is 30 cm. A seam or penetration of 1.5 cm (less than an inch) only provides 20 dB of shielding. If you need 40 dB, that reduces to 1.5 mm, and 60 dB it is only 0.15 mm. No wonder we need EMI gaskets (or even welded seams) and bulkhead connectors at the higher frequencies!