Your Avr Pic

16 Relay Board for Your 8051 ARM AVR PIC Project 24V
Paypal

US $65.00

16 Relay Board for your AVR PIC Project 5V
Paypal

US $65.00

12 Relay Board for Your 8051 ARM AVR PIC Project 24V
Paypal

US $49.00

12 Relay Board for your AVR PIC Project 5V
Paypal

US $49.00

12 Relay Board for your AVR PIC Project 24V
Paypal

US $49.00

Ten Relay Board Card for your AVR PIC Project 12V
Paypal

US $41.00

Your Avr Pic
How long do common electronic components survive for?

Was wondering how long common electronic components can last in various conditions. Can't find anything on Google, so i'm leaving it in Y!As capable hands.

Most importantly i would like to know how long the shelf life is for your average signal transistor and power transistor. And the shelf life for a microcontroller such as a PIC or AVR. Things such as resistors and ceramic resonators too.

And actual active life of those components, i've heard 40 years is the endurance of an AVR microprocessor, but that's off the Atmel site so you can't really trust it.
I would assume that polymer encapsulated devices means conventional power/signal transistor packages.

So operated at low power in a bone dry environment would result in insane lifetimes?

Semiconductors generally have a lifetime of a million years or so when dry and at room temperature.

Polymer encapsulated devices have shorter life with humidity; all silicon devices have shorter lifetimes with temperature. At a junction temp of 175°C, life is measure in hours or less.

The term lifetime is perhaps deceptive. A million year lifetime for a transistor does not assure a single transistor will last 1 million years. Reliability is a statistical thing; some individual components fail right away, a few occasionally fail during the life of the devices, then at the end of life, the failure rate increases. This behavior is called a bathtub curve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

Since a piece of electronic equipment usually has many devices, and a single device failure typically prevents the equipment from functioning, the individual devices must have a long life for the equipment life to be decent. MIL-HDBK-217 has a standard calculation methodology for reliability. The is measured in MTBF, mean time before failure. Half of the equipment will survive to this time.

Search the web for MIL-HDBK-217 to download it.

http://www.mil-hdbk-217.com/

Good luck!

PS, an AVR operated at reasonable temps has an excellent chance of surviving 40 yrs. Keep the temps low, and life is much longer. For example, I typically spec low powered versions of processors, even with somewhat lower speeds, because reliability is so much better.

Edit:
Polymer encapsulated are plastic packages, generally black. Hermetic can be metal cans, gray multilayer (sidebraze) packages, or gray frit sealed (glass sealed) packages.

True, low temps (like ambient) with dry conditions (non-condensing is usually good enough) do result in insane lifetimes for electronics.