FAQ 10: Should I burn-in GaAs ICs?
The answer to this question depends on what is being sought in
performing the burn-in. There are two primary reasons to perform burn-in.
The most common reason is because it is a requirement to meet certain military
ratings. In this case, the decision is simple, you either meet the requirement,
or you don't. The second reason for performing a burn-in is to screen the
devices. In this case, it's usually an economic decision. If it costs more
to experience a failure than it does to perform the burn-in, then it makes
sense to implement a screen. The problem comes in measuring the costs.
Everyone knows that failures are expensive, not only in labor and material
costs, but in damage to a company's reputation. But there are a lot of
hidden costs with burn-in too. The ones typically left out are the costs
of damaging and removing good devices incorrectly, and in measuring the
effectiveness of the screen for removing all the devices that are actually
bad.
Often, perfectly good devices are erroneously mistaken as "caught"
defective devices, and the truly anomalous devices escape the screen.
In the TriQuint experience of screening over 5,000 devices in an engineering
mode and even more devices in a production mode, it has been proven that
burn-in is not economical for GaAs devices from a supplier standpoint.
The instance of screening anomalous devices in a 150°C 168 hour burn-in
is at a practically undetectable level below 0.1%. The resulting damage
to the devices is roughly an order of magnitude higher than that. This
"double whammy" of extremely high costs and degradation of device quality
indicates burn-in is an unwise screen to consider. Additionally, while
performing these burn-ins, electrical testing screens or "guardbands"
were found to be much more effective than burn-in screens.
Use Our Products
