Hi John-

Are you talking about independent static protect IC's, such as implemented
on USB and other frequently mated interfaces? 

If not, this is a semiconductor diode which should never get forward biased,
and the reverse bias will be a small fraction of its breakdown voltage.
Under these assumptions, the static protection diodes will work fine long
after what they are protecting has failed. If you don't start with those
assumptions, then you are talking about damage during a protection event.
That is significantly more interesting, but would require you to get
statistics on the protection events, meaning they are part of your typical
usage environment. That seems weird unless you're talking about specific
protection devices as noted above.

For specifically designed protective devices, I'm sure the manufacturers
should be able to guide you on what the expected lifetime is in a certain
"dirty" usage environment. Or you could simply repetitively do the
overvoltage until the device you're interested in fails. There are several
different models for static discharges for this kind of application, and
they are well publicized.

Wayne  

-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nieznanski, John A -
Exelis
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2015 6:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Accelerated Life Tests for ESD diodes?

Hello Tech-Net!

I was just starting a literature search on the topic of Accelerated Life
Testing for CMOS ESD diodes. Has anyone seen any results from this type of
testing, either successful or unsuccessful? I'd like to start by getting a
good handle on the relevant failure modes.

Thanks!

John Nieznanski

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