Sunday, November 18, 2018

MEMs oscillator sensitivity to helium (helium kills iPhones)



I tested the 32KHz MEMs oscillator used in some phones, and discovered that just a 2% helium environment will cause the oscillator to fail.  I also do a teardown of the MEMs device, and inspect it under the electron microscope.

iFixit blog post: https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/  and vid:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0YLW6v5hrA


Original thread about MRI facility and iPhone failure on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9mk2o7/mri_disabled_every_ios_device_in_facility/



MEMs silicon encapsulation:  http://micromachine.stanford.edu/~bongsang/pdf/Candler_2005_Transducers05_Hydrogen_diffusion_encapsulated.pdf

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