Detection of counterfeit electronic components through ambient mass spectrometry and chemometrics

Abstract

In the last several years, illicit electronic components have been discovered in the inventories of several distributors and even installed in commercial and military products. Illicit or counterfeit electronic components include a broad category of devices that can range from the correct unit with a more recent date code to lower-specification or non-working systems with altered names, manufacturers and date codes. Current methodologies for identification of counterfeit electronics rely on visual microscopy by expert users and, while effective, are very time-consuming. Here, a plasma-based ambient desorption/ionization source, the flowing atmospheric pressure afterglow (FAPA) is used to generate a mass-spectral fingerprint from the surface of a variety of discrete electronic integrated circuits (ICs). Chemometric methods, specifically principal component analysis (PCA) and the bootstrapped error-adjusted single-sample technique (BEAST), are used successfully to differentiate between genuine and counterfeit ICs. In addition, chemical and physical surface-removal techniques are explored and suggest which surface-altering techniques were utilized by counterfeiters.

Helium conservation by discontinuous introduction in the flowing atmospheric-pressure afterglow source for ambient desorption-ionization mass spectrometry

“…The FAPA discharge cell is a quartz tube ( 18,19 The FAPA source was oriented at a 45-degree angle with respect to both the sample and the mass spectrometer. The basic design has been described previously, 9 though materials and electrode spacing have been slightly modied in the version described here.…”

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and chemometrics for the characterization and discrimination of writing/photocopier paper types: Application in forensic document examinations

“…Therefore, many researchers [19,20] applied PCA for discrimination of various samples which otherwise difficult to discriminate.…”

Discrimination of constructed air samples using multivariate analysis of full scan membrane introduction mass spectrometry (MIMS) data

“…20 These chemometric methods have been used to analyze mixture data collected by mass spectrometry for a variety of applications. [21][22][23][24][25][26] Since MIMS produces full scan spectra that are the superposition of spectra from individual compounds in a mixture, chemometric methods can, in principle, resolve both quantitative and qualitative problems. The use of chemometric methods to assist in the quantification of specific analytes (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX)) in combined standard solutions from electron ionization (EI) MIMS spectra has been discussed by Ohorodnik et al 27 and Gardner et al 28 As the quantification of analytes in complex mixtures from full scan MIMS spectra is based on differences in the pattern and intensity of analyte peaks in the mass spectra, it follows that chemometric analysis should also be able to qualitatively discriminate between classes of samples.…”

“…Multivariate curve resolution (MCR) focuses on resolving components (e.g., individual molecules or specific point sources and their contributions) from samples containing mixtures . These chemometric methods have been used to analyze mixture data collected by mass spectrometry for a variety of applications …”