[time-nuts] MEMS oscillators

[jimlux]

On 10/30/18 3:50 AM, Adrian Godwin wrote:
> How sensitive to atmospheric environment are MEMs oscillators ?
> 
> https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9si6r9/postmortem_mri_disables_every_ios_device_in/
> 
> 
> It gets closer to time-nuts territory in the earlier discussion - see
> captaincool's contribution some way down :
> 
> https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9mk2o7/mri_disabled_every_ios_device_in_facility/
> 

The helium leak sounds a bit sketchy, especially when you're talking 
about a system that has large RF and magnetic fields.  Why would a MEMS 
resonator care about what gas it is surrounded by.

That said, I recall someone telling me about problems with early MEMS RF 
switches and needing some trace amount of water vapor to make them work 
- work fine on the bench, but them into thermal vacuum testing and after 
some amount of time they stop working, as the H2O diffuses out of the 
(non-hermetic) packages.