How do electronics eventually break? Do the connections on the motherboard get weaker or thinner over time?
In: Technology
There can be different causes of failure. The circuit board will usually have exposed copper and tin which will over time corrode and wither away disconnecting the components from each other. Tin is also quite brittle so if the device is dropped the tin might develop cracks which after repeated drops can go clean through the connection. A similar thing can happen to the circuit board itself. If you drop it the force from the mountings to the components will go through the circuit board which can cause it to crack. These cracks can sever vital traces and prevent the electronics from working. But the chips themselves can also stop working for various reasons. They are made of different materials which can expand at different rates when the temperature changes. This may cause tiny cracks that eventually cuts a wire inside the chip. Transistors may also wear out with use. This is especially noticeable with the transistors used in flash memory as they can be permanently damaged after just a few thousand write operations.
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