COTS Components for Space Applications: the Evaluation of Apparent Activation Energy (Eaa)

The increasingly widespread use of COTS components in equipment with high added value, for critical uses and for use in aggressive environments has brought a new approach to this type of components, especially from the point of view of reliability. In this study, we will examine an approach based on the "forward development" of the Arrhenius equation and in particular of the Apparent Activation Energy Eaa. As the manufacturing technology of electronic components is improving in great strides, it is also necessary to adapt our approach to Eaa which, in some ways, is linked to constructive goodness and to the refinement of production procedures. For this it is necessary to establish a series of criteria that lead to a correct choice of the parameter in order not to have estimates of the useful life of the component that are too pessimistic and therefore unrealistic, or to have durations so favourable as to be objectively unrealistic. In this paper, we will bring some examples and propose some very conservative approaches.