A way to erase OTP components?

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire_at_neurotica.com>
Date: Wed Jan 22 13:02:43 2003

On Wednesday, January 22, 2003, at 08:07 AM, Arno Kletzander wrote:
> If in fact the same die was used in both components, then it's only the
> plastic (which is impenetrable to the commonly-used ultra-violet
> light) that
> prevents the OTP variant from being erased and reprogrammed.
>
> However, there are kinds of radiation similar to light which *will*
> penetrate the plastic housing...you see where this goes? Will the
> memory be erased
> when you, say, X-ray the OTP component, will it stay unaffected, or is
> the
> thing just going to die?

   According to this:

   http://www.jmargolin.com/patents/eprom.htm

   it should be possible to erase an EPROM using X-rays, but there's a
possibility of the crystalline structure of the silicon being disrupted
in the process. It's an interesting read.

          -Dave

--
Dave McGuire           "Wear whatever you want...Just don't be surprised
St. Petersburg, FL        if you wind up with a blow-gun dart in your
                            prosthetic boobies."    -Kurt Huhn
Received on Wed Jan 22 2003 - 13:02:43 GMT

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