automotive parts vs commercial parts vs extended temperature range - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: exe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 13, 2021, 06:17:38 pm
content: Hi there,I see a lot of parts come in two flawors: normal ("commercial"?) and AEC-Q101. For example:https://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/1SS400T1-D.PDF. Lots of stuff from onsemi have their "NSV" counterparts qualified for AEC-Q101. Same with TI (afaik, "q1" suffix or so) and other vendors.My question is: what is the difference between them? Is it only more thorough testing, or those parts are better binned. I'm asking because I want to understand if I can expect better performance from them. I started reading the standard, but it seems to be a long read.Bonus question: many parts from LT (ADI) come in different temperature ranges. What's the difference between them? Are high-temperature parts tested at those extreme temperatures? Do they use different plastic? Do they have any other better specs? Datasheets don't promise any additional benefits from using more expensive parts.

author: MikeK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2021, 07:32:38 pm
content: Operating temperature.

author: exe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 13, 2021, 08:32:43 pm
content: What's the difference between ICs manufactured for 0..70C and -40..125C temperature ranges?

author: S. Petrukhin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2021, 08:56:01 pm
content: The price difference.Perhaps some processes in the production technology are slower, which gives a cleaner crystal result.

author: Giaime
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 02:20:37 pm
content: There's basically no difference in production process (that would be very expensive!), only the testing processes are different between front-end (wafer level) and back-end (packaged IC):- for the commercial 0-70°C IC, perhaps you do a room-temperature test in front-end and room-temperature testing in back-end. Maybe the back-end test flow is reduced, only to check bond wire continuity. To guarantee 70°C performance you could skip testing and maybe base the binning on data gathered at room temperature and "scaled" (by known characterized models run on a couple of production lots) to 70°C, when checking against test limits.- for the industrial or automotive part, perhaps you do +125°C complete testing in front-end and a complete test run at -40°C and +125°C in back-end...but there could me many more combinations etc... the more test insertions you have (and how many of them are not at room temperature), the more expensive it gets.Automotive qualified parts could have additional requirement for example a tight tracking of the production location or perhaps a single production location, to better trace defects etc...

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2021, 01:21:10 pm
content: Ok, I have worked for some years as one of the component guys for a major T2 suppliers. I handled paperwork and test results for components.The answer is that some components are 100% identical as industrial parts, some are not.Things that may be happening:-manufacturer bins components and better bins go to automotive/aerospace/medical with different part number-dies are actually different - this is because sometimes it is not possible/economical to sell parts commercially with special production testing features required by hi-rel applications-process control is (or at least ought to be...) much tighter. This goes mainly for parts other than semiconductors. I have been in the production cleanroom of a company you definitely know, that makes passive stuff, and the guy places a rack with substrates on the bottom shelf in th locker room and was changing boots for lab ones. He places his normal shoes ona shelf above the one with substrate rack on it. We could hear sand/dust grains hitting the substrates. We were like WTFFFFFFFF(F)??. They still made stuff that other companies were not able to.-quite often there are differences in semiconductor backend. Different bonding wire/technique, molding resin, leadframe material/design, dia attach method, RoHs lead plating process. Some of those require different die processing (eg different bond pad treatment during chip manufacture)-manufacturing location. Supplier X would make hi-rel eeproms at their own fab, while farming the low end ones to some far eastern foundry. The part name differed in one letter only, but the chip on the inside was entirely different.-some parts had a 100% prolonged load test before shipping as, they couldn't avoid 'crib death' failures.Temperature range and being automotive are two separate things. AEC-Q100 (chips) has 4 grades, from 3 to 0. Grade 3 is -40...+85°C so mostly the same as industrial grade temperature range. There is also AEC-Q101 for discrete semiconductors and AEC-Q200 for passives. These don't have grades. There is a very strict set of tests required to pass as AEC-Q part, and non-AEC-Q typically don;t happen, unless it a really, realy, lreally special part (i.e some really important people had to approve it). Standard operatin temperature of ECU is 85°C anyways. When we had a thing that had tu actually run at 140°C ambient, those parts didn't do the job.Some companies will only offer automotive parts to automotive customers with very special part numbers (Laird comes to mind). Some companies do AEC-Q qualification as a standard (eg. Infineon) others will do it per request on industrial parts (won't give names here).This does go much-much deeper than this. Definitely not the case of selling the same thing at an elevated price with special part number. At least not in msot of the cases.