Abstract :
GERMANIUM DEVICES, when correctly used, are capable of essentially infinite life. It was commonly assumed in early higher temperature semiconductor work that silicon devices and those of other materials — such as SiC and the III-V compounds — would have similar life expectancy. However, among the early silicon applications, a number of installations were encountered where unusually high failure rates were recorded. A common feature of these installations was that there were present a large number of “off-on” operations each day.
