Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Is "integrated circuit burn-in" a thing?
<< < (5/10) > >>
IDEngineer:
It's early this morning, but the result of the overnight test with the BMI160's is that neither of them failed overnight. Like the most recent LSM6DS3 test, that's one board with many hours of power applied and one board literally fresh out of the antistatic bag. When I did this with the LSM's, the new one failed overnight. But now neither of the BMI's show any ill effects. I'll continue letting them run, but it's not looking good for ST....
ogden:

--- Quote from: IDEngineer on April 23, 2019, 10:12:07 pm ---No, they were assembled by a contract manufacturing house that we use all the time. Very high end shop, leading edge pick-and-place and reflow ovens, etc. They do all of our protos and most of our production. I'm confident they followed ST's guidelines from the spec sheet.

--- End quote ---

It is important that you/they followed spec sheet "Surface mounting guidelines for MEMS sensors", TN1198 (en.CD00134799.pdf)


--- Quote ---But again, even if they didn't, anything "damaged by soldering heat" doesn't usually spontaneously repair itself.

--- End quote ---

It's usually about mechanical stress which may relax after some time or after some number of thermal cycles.
IDEngineer:

--- Quote from: ogden on April 24, 2019, 01:09:20 pm ---It's usually about mechanical stress which may relax after some time or after some number of thermal cycles.
--- End quote ---
Right, but I would be surprised if mechanical stress could selectively fail the SPI interface. Impose a bias on the MEMS sensor readings, sure. But cause the SPI interface to stop working, after it DID work for 30-120 minutes? Then keep the power applied and "after a while" this error stops occurring and the SPI interface becomes reliable? Hmm....
David Hess:

--- Quote from: IDEngineer on April 23, 2019, 08:59:53 pm ---Is there anything in the industry about IC burn-in? Perhaps specific to MEMS devices in particular?
--- End quote ---

Burn-in is a very expensive process so only used on parts which can support the cost.  Test time is measured in 10s of cents to dollars per second so it is used as sparingly as possible.

Exceptions include high cost parts which support built in self test and grading like microprocessors and memory.  The highest precision voltage references may go through extended burn-in.  Many military and aerospace qualifications require burn-in.


--- Quote from: SparkyFX on April 24, 2019, 05:45:07 am ---That question reminds me of something: Have the parts been passing an X-Ray while crossing a border or such?

There are quite a few things that can damage such sensitive parts.
--- End quote ---

Exposure would have to be 10s of minutes to hours to matter.  X-rays roughly act like short wavelength UV exposure except they can penetrate through the packaging.  You can use an x-ray generator to erase floating gate memory but as with a UVEPROM eraser, it takes a while.
AndyC_772:
Even so, burn-in is normally used to detect early failures, not to somehow magically make faulty parts start working. I'm not aware of any physical mechanism which would cause a damaged part to start working just because it's been switched on for a while.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod