As IC has ever increasing applications, various fake, altered and renewed ICs are found now and then. Therefore, be mindful when you use or buy IC to ensure you will not be beguiled. Then, how can one rapidly and accurately verify real and fake ICs? Our experience is:
（1）Judge from how old the IC or chip is. Unused new IC or chip is usually equivalent old, and there is generally no obvious difference in the old degree. While fake chip is usually renewed with old chip, which may looks pretty new or even incredibly new, but when you watch it closely or under high power microscope, you will find trace of having ever been used before. It can be easily identified as long as you watch it carefully against the light.
（2）Judge from the chip’s surface of the logo’s color, the chip’s surface of fake IC usually has some defects, which can be as many as 10 types according to my summary. If the surface is too new or there is abrasion trace, you’d better be careful. Nowadays, few people study these kinds of fake goods (We think those interested in IC identification should spend more efforts to observe and research to find out common defects).
（3） Judge from the external package and label. However true to real one, fake goods always have defects, which will be found if you watch color and logo barcode closely enough. Practice makes perfect. If the goods you buy are reel packaged, you have to be careful, because those people making fake goods can hardly find packaging material of the original length such as original tray or pipe . . . while tape is easy to make and is very inexpensive. Usually the quality of tape of fake goods is not as good as the original one, it looks very cheap. In case you receive the goods and find there is sealed pack outside of the tape, then the goods you have received is very probably fake, because the moisture-sensitive labels of the tape IC falls into the category of Level 3 and does not need to be sealed.
（4）Renewed ICs are usually made by grinding off the original logo and making new logo by laser printing, therefore you will be able to find the trace of having ever been grinded off if you observe closely, and the rear side of IC will also be grinded off, because most renewed ICs are obtained from various resources and therefore the serial numbers in the rear sides have to be erased.
（5）Most fake ICs in the market are made by copying the ICs of some big name manufacturers in Europe and US, usually some low end products such as logic and linear ICs, over 90% of MURATA and TDK components we found in Shenzhen SEG electronics market are fake. These fake goods are usually rather hard to verify and require the assistance of the original manufacturer or check if the barcode is real or not. Another method is to cut off the chip surface to see if it is real or not. |
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