In a typical PCBA design which consists of relay driver circuit, we found the FET drain and gate short circuit problem causing damage to MCU DIOs due to excessive sink current in production on 5 or 6 failed out of 100 PCBA units.
Circuit Configuration is as follows:
The relay driver circuit consists of MCU DIO driving directly to the gate of FDC6303N. The Drain is connected to relay coil of internal resistance 86 ohms. The realy is safely freewhelled with S1MB Diode. The source is connected to ground. The supply for the relay is 5V, the MCU DIO is operating at 3.3V, CMOS totempole output has maximum sinking current of 15mA.
The problem is obviously due to the shorted gate and drain of FDC6303N however my questions here are,
Is it possible that there are defective FETs with alreadyshorted gate and drain from the new lot of FETs catered for Production?
Or is there any possible fault condition which can cause a good working FET to have gate and drain shorted?
Drain-to-gate shorts is a typical failure mode for power mosfets.
Amusingly, the mosfet is still probably operating properly, that is it's operating the same as any other mosfet with its drain and gate externally connected together. But I digress.
You want to know why the part failed. SFAIK, any of the various overstress conditions can cause this type of failure. E.g., overheating, in any of the ways Rds(on), switching losses, avalanche heating, or overvoltage. Including gate overvoltage, which can happen if a high current is switched too fast, causing high dI/dt, and a substantial source-wiring inductance, causing high V = L dI/dt, which can be a short damaging gate-voltage spike.
Lot's of handwaving there, but the standard remedies apply, a diode across the coil, a gate resistor to slow down switching speed, etc.
But I think it is not really a design issue. We have already added freewheeling diode verifying the back emf is already eliminated by checking the waveforms. And 10k Gate resistor is there. So there is no way possibly to damage the FET.
.But I think it is not really a design issue. We have already added .freewheeling diode verifying the back emf is already eliminated by .checking the waveforms. And 10k Gate resistor is there. So there is no .way possibly to damage the FET. . .Does anyone have similar experience? . .Thanks and Best Regards
If you have a 10k gate resistor, how is it killing the DIO?
Wow. The fet is rated for 0.68 amps, 25 volts, and it's all zener gate/ESD protected. You are running it at 5 volts and 60 mA. There's no way it should fail.
Are they dead at turnon?
Are you buying the parts from an official distributor?
.Current from 5 V supply through relay is approximately 60mA sinking .into the LOW Dio pin rated at 15mA. (4 times the rated value).
Then there is something you are not telling us. From your two comments, you say the MCU DIO pin connects to the fet through a 10k resistor. If the fet shorts to
5 volts (g to d), then the max current can be 0.5 mA. I=E/R= 5/10000=0.0005
I always noticed on year, when doing a huge amplifier design, which contained a row of huge IGBTs and FETs on a 20 inch long sink, that we had some odd failures early on in the design that had no reason for being...
Early failure modes were tied to coplanarity issues on the sink. It seems our assembler did not understand the concept of coplanarity until I showed him the proper assembly sequence. Without it, it was as if any part that did get attached right was not attached at all.
Anyway, we experienced plenty of what appeared to be "immediate" failures due to the lack of a part being sinked properly. It was really a matter of a few seconds. and went away once assembly efficacy was achieved.
It seems that those thermal spikes were fast enough to take the part to critical failure temperatures. Good heat sinking is REQUIRED, and that right where it belongs... on the back of that tab!
If not, you could rent one. Examine the device as you utilize it. Watch the failure mode as it occurs and examine the waveforms during that period to determine if it is circuit design related of heat management related.
Make sure that your heat sink attachment has a high integrity thermal pathway. Do not simply use a dry, "air" attachment. Make sure that it is well sinked.
Once you rule out that, then get back to probing the circuit.
Have you ever used 'transzorbs', or put ferrite beads on the gate lead during assembly? As close to the part as possible.
If you cannot test each FET prior to assembly, you cannot blame the lot. You *should* test a good "spc" like sample from what you buy, and if more than a certain number fails, you reject the entire lot back to the vendor.
If that level of testing is not feasible, then post-assembly testing MUST be used to determine the failure mode in a NON-destructive way so that the failed units can have that part trade out without causing any proximal circuit failures, keeping the unit in the loop with less repair requisite.
Hand assembly, yes. Maintain strict ESD handling procedures.
Automated assembly, less likely. One must be careful to observe ESD practices and procedures when loading the pick and place machine, AND when receiving, inspecting, handling, stocking, and disbursement of the parts as well.
ESD can cause prime pass yield problems that are hard to nail down. Re-examine and strengthen your ESD policies and procedures where you may need to.
Does your turn on test send a DC pulse? If so, how do you generate that pulse? Could it be a 'hard start' issue? In other words, make sure the DC you send to the unit for your tests do not initiate at too high a slew rate.
A 'soft start' as the industry calls it.
I still think it may be an ESD issue, since the design works fine for all the other units and the failed units are not circuit use failures, but apparently failed devices prior to any use at all.
On a sunny day (Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:04:55 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Myauk wrote in :
Please note that it is not sufficient to just have the diode over the relay, you ALSO must decouple the power rail at that point, else the drain will spike way above the supply when the relay turns of, via the trace impedance and whatever wires there are before you get the power supply. And also add a small gate resistor *in series* please. Sometimes a small (few nF) capacitor between drain and source can bring down possible very high frequency oscillations that may also happen.
.10k resistor is the parallel pull down resistor between gate and .source of FET. . .There is no resistance, the DIO directly drives the FET Gate. . .Regards
I would at least put a small resistance, say 100 ohms or so, in series with the gate to PIO pin. I'm not sure why you need the pull down as the MCU should drive it ok. Unless the MCU three states the pin prior to completing the reset. What bypassing are you using in the circuit? MCU? Fet?
Whoa! When I said, "a gate resistor to slow down switching speed" I could not have meant a resistor to ground, how would that slow the mosfet's switching speed? No, you may need a series resistor. A 10k resistor to ground might make you feel comfortable, in case the logic supply isn't present (could that happen?), but here I was talking about an everyday series gate resistor. Maybe as high as 470 to 1.8k or 3.3k or so, to slow your low-capacitance mosfet's switching speed, and help it survive high-inductance PCB wiring.
Recall the damaging equations: high dI/dt ==> high V = L dI/dt.
The FDC6303N datasheet says Crss = 9pF. Assume a modest 50mA gate drive from your processor, and we get dV/dt = I/C = 5.5V/ns, which says your 5V 60mA relay current could shutoff in 1ns. Going back to our equations, that would imply Vs = 60V for say 1uH of PCB wiring inductance. OK, less for slower switching. Say 1/3 as fast, that's still 20V on the source with the gate pinned, and with an 8V max Vgs rating, 20V could certainly zap your gates. And yes, that's a design problem.
I seriously doubt your mosfets would fail incoming inspection.
BTW, what are you doing with the FDC6303N's second mosfet?
By the way, I have checked the rise time of the pulse to drive the relay iwith scope. It is 37.6ns and the VGS rise is up to 3.82V only at 3.3V dring singal to the FET. So it is safe to say that I won't kill the FET as it is less than half of VGS rating 8V.
And checking turning on and turning off of the relay the VDS never exceeds 5.8V.
This does not mean that I won't add the series resistor as I understand that it will also prevent from excessive drain of current into DIO of MCU in addition to slowing down the MOSFET switching speed.
Special Thanks to you all on your suggestions and comments on this topic.
Sorry, that's not the way it works. Yes of course your gate- drive voltage is under 8V. And your risetime may not look fast, but that includes the slow gnd-to-plateau, and plateau-to-Vcc portions. It's during the short plateau when all the action happens and drain voltage switches. Furthermore, what matters is the true gate voltage, inside the die, hidden from you for a short time on the far side of the gate spreading resistance.
And it's the source voltage that has the damaging spike, so that the gate-to-source voltage Vgs exceeds 8V for an instant. Being short, and internal to the mosfet, it's very hard to probe fully. The best test for this effect is to see the failures disappear after you slow down the drain's rise/fall time by adding gate resistance.
But don't add too much resistance. At least for high-voltage mosfets, above say 100V, if you switch too slowly, slower than say 50 to 100ns, they can oscillate strongly at 8 to 20MHz, involving the source inductance, and excess Vgs can damage the mosfet. OK, perhaps that won't happen with your 25V part.
Once again, this isn't easy to probe. I've had success with low-capacitance 500MHz probes. One of the big problems in probing is the probe's ground return, which needs to be one of those short (1/4") pieces of spring wire extending from the probe's ground ring adjacent to the small sharp tip. Done right, you're making a differential RF measurement. As is often the case with these fast signals, exactly what are you measuring, that's the question.
Yes, let us know what you learn.
Is only one of the two mosfets failing?
BTW, for myself, I'd rather not use a wimpy 8V Vgs-rated mosfet, unless I had to, and could take serious precautions. I'd rather select a higher-voltage part and accept a little higher Rds(on). Your FDC6303N is rated at 0.6 ohms max, which is only 2.2mW max at 60mA. I mean, give me a break, why not play it safe and let that bugger heat up a bit?
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.