EVALUATION OF SILICON METALLIC RECTIFIERS.
Abstract:
Silicon rectifiers offer many advantages over rectifiers made of other materials, therefore, the use of these devices is widespread, particularly in military equipment applications. This project is designed to yield information to specify rectifier service life as a function of the ambient operating temperature for a medium-power class of diodes characterized by IN540 diodes. To this end, three groups of rectifiers have been placed on life test at different ambient temperatures to determine three points on a curve of life versus ambient temperature. An accumulated test time of over 6500 hours has been represented by data gathered on the 200 C environmental group. To date, a total of 35 failures have occurred, and 10 diodes have survived the life test on this group. The 185 C and 170 C environmental groups have been subjected to over 3000 hours of experiment. At the end of 2952 hours, 30 failures had occurred for the 185 C test group and seven failures for the 170 C test group. Diodes from Manufacturer 6 continue to exhibit a markedly low rate of failure at the elevated temperatures of 200 C and 185 C. Author