Bench Talk

High sulfur environments play havoc with everything from IT industry server farms and data/storage centers and telecommunication base stations to industrial control equipment and rubber, paper, and oil manufacturing plants. In standard film resistors, their internal silver (Ag) or silver palladium (AgPd) terminal is only protected by the epoxy passivation layer making the device very susceptible to sulfur-based gases. Realizing how sulfur gases can affect the reliability of its film resistors, Bourns developed a specialized Palladium (Pd) layer that removes the chance for corrosion and the formation of silver sulfide.