RadioBanter - View Single Post

March 7th 05, 08:02 PM

wrote:
My wife and son are both E.E.'s and their explanation is that IC's
begin to degrade slowly as a result of impurituies in the wafer.
Simple components like capacitors dry out and resistors begin to open
up. Wish I knew more, but I can hear what they tell me in the radios
I've owned. I owned one of the comparison radios, the Panasonic
RF5000b. Big beast of a 24 pound radio with four antennas. It was
pretty insensitive by any measure. Sure it would catch the big
nighttime SW's but that was about it. Other radios, such as a Radio
Shack DX150b were still pretty sensitive (and still raspy sounding)
after 25 years, so the rate of degradation isn't a constant.

Do a net search on "eletro-migration".
Over time the electrons carry some of the ions that make
junctions either P or N. Electro-migration increases with heat,
I think it doubles for every 3C degree increase. This is why
overclocking CPUs cn lead to unexpected failures.
Terry