Detecting Counterfeit Electrical Components

18 March 2020 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 5 July 2022

Hardware designers face a variety of challenges today. Critical hardware components, such as NAND, DRAM, and OLED displays are experiencing shortages and long lead times. Companies are increasingly compressing schedules and striving to reduce the cost of producing their products. Driven by these schedule, price, and supply constraints, engineers and manufacturers will often acquire components from smaller distributors, electronic markets, scrap electronics dealers, or even eBay. This has only been exacerbated by the chip shortage during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The largest risk of using these untrustworthy sources for component purchases is the risk of receiving counterfeit parts.

Counterfeit components are introduced in a variety of ways, such as recycling old components from end-of-life products, recycling scrap electronic material, selling out-of-spec components, selling factory rejects, creating a cloned part, remarking parts with a higher-grade (e.g. commercial-grade parts marked as industrial-grade), or forging documentation.

One of the largest risks with counterfeit components is that they almost work correctly. Take this example of counterfeit electrical safety outlets – a component you probably don’t think twice about:

Authorities in Suffolk County, N.Y. seized counterfeit electrical safety outlets—used in bathrooms, kitchens, and garages to guard against electrical shock—bearing phony UL logos. The bogus parts had no ground-fault-interrupt circuitry. Had they been installed anywhere near water, the results could have been fatal.

Many counterfeit components do not have such egregious and easily detected problems such as missing circuitry. Instead, the electrical characteristics of counterfeit components such as slew rate, current supply, timing, or noise might be out-of-spec. They also tend to be less reliable and exhibit a shorter time-to-failure than their legitimate counterparts. Counterfeit components can wreak havoc on consumer electronics. It would be utterly detrimental if they were to sneak into safety-critical devices like fire alarms, medical devices, or automotive electronics.

Detecting Counterfeit Components

Luckily, those who make counterfeit components are often not very good at it. Legitimate component manufacturers have high quality standards for their parts. In many cases, counterfeit components expose themselves with major packaging flaws. Common visual inspection cues are:

• Incorrect part numbers
• Incorrect date codes
• Impossible date codes
• Date codes that are in the future
• Incorrect manufacturer country of origin marking
• Components with the same lot code shown as being manufactured in different countries
• Pre-soldered pins
• Pins pitch is too wide or too narrow
• Package made with the wrong material
• Different numbers, shapes, and sizes of
  IC
  package indents
• Laser cut lines in the markings
• Incorrect font
• Crooked or misaligned text
• Incorrect silkscreen on a flexible circuit or
  PCB
• Incorrect / incomplete logos
• Logos that vary from part-to-part
• Misspellings
• Using ink-based IC markings that can be removed with acetone

Counterfeit components also give themselves away when comparing die shots between suspected counterfeits and known-good parts. Sometimes counterfeiters do a decent job with package markings, which may cause parts to slip through a visual inspection. Consider this example of a
counterfeit Nordic NRF24L01+ transceiver. When the dies between the suspect parts and the legitimate parts are compared, you can clearly see that they are different. Unfortunately, capturing and comparing die shots safely requires the help of a lab.

From Around the Web

The following resources will help you identify counterfeit components if you suspect you are at risk.

• Counterfeit Electronic Component Detection provides strategies (with visual examples) for identifying counterfeit parts
• All About Circuits: How to Spot Counterfeit Electronic Components
• Counterfeit Parts Blog
• Combat Counterfeits is a website dedicated to reducing the incidence of counterfeit electronic components in the aerospace and military supply chains
  • Component Inspection – Your Front Line Defense in Counterfeit Avoidance
• Business Week: Dangerous Fakes – looks inside the counterfeiting operations in China
• Clive Maxfield: Securing the Silicon Supply Chain

Counterfeit Examples and Teardowns

• Bunnie Studios: On MicroSD Problems – Bunnie shows counterfeit/irregular SD cards and the differences in markings
• TI NE5532: Real vs Fake Op Amp
• Combat Counterfeits: A Gallery of Counterfeit Examples
• Counterfeit Electronic Component Detection contains a variety of examples
• How to Multiply Currents: Inside a Counterfeit Analog Multiplier by Ken Shirriff
• Zeptobars: TI NE5532: Real vs Fake die shot by Ken Shirriff – shows the difference between a real and counterfeit op amp