A failure analysis of the NTC thermistors

Abstract

Failure analysis is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure, often with the goal of determining corrective actions or liability. Negative Temperature Coefficient (NTC) thermistors, with its advantage such as high accuracy, high sensitivity, high signal to noise ratio and low cost, has been widely used in almost every field like home appliances, manufacturing industries, precise instruments and so on. In this paper, a failure analysis has been carried out on failed samples of the NTC thermistors. 2 failure modes were discovered during the analysis process. And general ideas and basic methods of failure analysis on NTC thermistors will also be introduced while the discussion on the failure cases. Failure mechanism was studied by analyzing the samples in different kinds of failure modes based on the experimental results. To improve the reliability of this kind of thermistors, some recommendations are given.