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
Applied Science on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AppliedScience