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Design                                                                                                                                                                                                               Design


          The first is the high-temperature operating life     AEC1, a 65V buck converter, is able to meet such

          (HTOL) test that simulates operating conditions      stringent reliability requirements while delivering
          to provoke temperature- and voltage-related          a 2A output.
          fail mechanisms inside a testing chamber (see
          Figure 2). The second is the temperature cycling
          (TC) test, which stresses the IC for mechanical      UNDERSTANDING THE
          fail mechanisms, as the IC is made of different      ACCELERATION FACTOR
          materials that each have different temperature       The HTOL test is defined by the JEDEC standard,
          coefficients.                                        JESD22-A108. A set of 231 units are subjected to
                                                               1,000 hours of operation time at 125°C. This test

          These are just two of the qualification stresses     uses the Arrhenius model to determine the ac-
          that an IC must pass before it can be released.      celeration factor (Af), which provides the needed
          The whole set of qualification tests for automo-     test time (tt) to simulate the equivalent time of
          tive ICs are defined by the AEC-Q100 standards,      real-world operation. Table 1 shows an exam-
          and many of these tests are also specified in the    ple with a mission profile that is 12,000 hours of
          JEDEC standards. Some applications have even         operation at an average junction temperature (T )
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          higher electronics reliability requirements, such    of 87°C. T  is the temperature of the silicon, and
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          as trucks and ruggedized vehicle systems, which      it should be especially considered with ICs that
          must be able to handle double the qualification      have significant power dissipation, as the ambi-
          stress for HTOL and TC tests to meet the target      ent temperature (T ) would be much lower than T .
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                                                                                A
          Mission Profile requirements. MPS’s MPQ4572-


                                                                                                                                 Table 1: AEC-Q100, Rev H; Table A7.1 – Basic Calculations for AEC-Q100 Stress Test Conditions and Durations.

                                                                                                                                 For this example, it takes 1,393 hours at 125°C T
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                                                                                                                                 to simulate 12,000 hours at 87°C T .
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                                                                                                                                 The HTOL qualification asks for 1,000 hours.
                                                                                                                                 Using the equations in Table 1, the acceleration
                                                                                                                                 factor in the above scenario is calculated to be
                                                                                                                                 8,615, which equals only 8,615 hours at 125°C T .
                                                                                                                                                                              J
                                                                                                                                 With that in mind, the mission profile would ex-
                                                                                                                                 ceed the qualification stress by about 40%.




                                                                                                                                 MISSION PROFILE
                                                                                                                                 CALCULATIONS

                                                                                                                                 Table 2 shows a mission profile, and how it is
                                                                                                                                 typically defined.


                                                                                                                                 In this example, there are defined active and        Table 2: Typical Mission Profile.

          Figure 2: MPS HTOL Chambers.                                                                                           passive modes, and all of the temperatures are

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