High-reliability-component market maintains growth

The high-reliability components market held up well during the two-year rough patch in the components industry.

Rob Speigel, Contributing Editor; Edited by Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, news -- EDN, September 9, 2010

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Much of the high-reliability market is still anchored in supporting these legacy systems. “We started off with a focus almost exclusively on the highreliability market in 1971,” says Michael Knight, vice president of product and supplier marketing at TTI Inc. “Now, these components make up about 20% of our overall business.”

Texas Instruments Inc started 30 years ago to produce high-reliability components. “Most of our customers were in defense and aerospace,” says Brad Little, product-line manager for TI ’s high-reliability team. “In the last few years, our customer base has become much broader.” Newer high-reliability applications, Little says, include oil exploration, down-hole drilling, undersea cabling, and railway lighting, all of which require product longevity in high-temperature environments. The medical market also requires high-reliability devices for use in sterilization equipment or imaging and radiation applications.

These applications have helped the high-reliability market move beyond simply providing legacy components. “There are on average 100 satellites launched each year, and these are long-term, two- to five-year projects,” says Little. All satellites require replacement over time, and today’s economy relies strongly on satellite-data capability.

One of the biggest challenges with the space environment is the bombardment of potentially damaging radiation. “We’re introducing a lot of new radiation-hardened devices for space, medical, and harsh environments,” says Little. Eliminating excess hydrogen in the IC-manufacturing process—a costly method—can improve radiation tolerance; reduce leakage, thus allowing a device to operate over higher temperatures; and improve reliability from a 10-year expected lifetime to a 20-year operational lifetime, according to Little.

Hardening components for harsh radiation environments can drastically affect the price of components. “A lot of satellites go up every year, so a lot of radiation-hardened parts are coming online,” says Bill Toumey, supplier and programs manager at the aerospace and defense group at Arrow Electronics Inc. The commercial, highreliability, and radiation-hardened versions of these parts sell for $5, $15, and $500, respectively, even though the versions offer the same functions.

The satellite market is keeping a number of component manufacturers interested in developing new high-reliability products. “The satellite business is going to grow significantly, so we’re concentrating on building for hard environments, wide temperature ranges, and radiation resistance,” says Ron Demcko, applications-engineering manager at AVX Corp, a component manufacturer. “We’re concentrating on this area because we know it’s going to be steady,” he adds. “We’re changing the configuration of parts, and we’re changing material systems to increase the performance of our components.”

The market for high-reliability components is generally resistant to economic ups and downs, as opposed to the volatile computer and consumer-electronics markets. Whereas component prices and production went through wild swings over the past three years, high-reliability components did not. “Military semiconductors stayed robust and continued to grow even through the recession,” says Bryan Brady (photo), vice president of defense and aerospace at Avnet Inc. He explains that funding for legacy programs still using military-specification parts drove much of that growth and that prices for the parts have remained stable.

Finding leaded components continues to be a challenge for those buying high-reliability parts. Although many component manufacturers are supporting legacy parts in leaded versions, few have created leaded versions of their new components. “By definition, high-reliability parts are leaded,” says Brady. “Over the past 10 to 15 years, the commercial plastics and COTS [commercial-off-the-shelf] product has become dominant in the military.” However, new designs are almost all commercial products, and many of those new parts do not contain lead, he notes. “Sometimes, the military is using mitigation strategies, such as solder dipping and reballing, to guard the component against tin whiskers and other solder-reliability concerns.”

A number of component manufacturers have created leaded versions of their new components. “Any part we produce commercially will also be introduced with tin-lead alternatives,” says Chris Reynolds, technical-marketing manager at AVX.