In the past few years, electrostatic chucks (ESCs) have become much more widespread in semiconductor manufacturing equipment. In addition to the elimination of moving parts, ESCs hold the promise to decrease the wafer edge exclusion, that is, to allow more good chips to be made on each wafer. A number of technical, material, and business challenges remain in making ESCs workable and reliable in all tools across the semiconductor factory, or fab. We will discuss issues of clamping force, clamping and declamping time, and wafer temperature control, describing how they affect design and choice of materials. The effect of these choices on adapting ESCs to various tools over various temperature ranges will also be discussed. The role of models and test results in accelerating development will be addressed. Finally, we will list some of the business challenges to implementing ESCs. Despite technical successes, many high‐volume fab lines are always reluctant to risk installing new technology, despite promises of improvement. SEMATECH has addressed these issues with the Working Groups that address standard specifications, study early testing results, and share manufacturing performance data.