Slightly burnt temperature sensor. Should I throw it away?

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

I've been messing with the TMP36 temperature sensor. I wired it wrong and connected Vin to GND and viceversa. :cold_sweat:

Ok, before you ask how has this happened, let me explain: this happened because, instead of connecting it as in the book's picture, I decided to read the datasheet to make sure. Turns out that whoever did this document is an optical illusions enthusiast. From the datasheet:

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My package was the third one, I just saw PIN1=Vs, PIN2=Vout, PIN3=GND without noticing that, unlike the other two packages, the sensor is depicted from below.

So I wired Vs to GND and GND to +5V by mistake. It smelled like something was burning, so I switched the circuit off. After re-reading specs to double-check the input voltage range [2.7V, 5.5V], tried again, even tried with 3.3 V, again with 5V plus series resistors, etc. In this case, it didn't burn because the voltage was about -1V in the sensor. In the end I connected it again to raw -5V, toasted it for a few seconds before I switched the whole thing off.

Finally I connected it the correct way. Looks like the readings are ok for room temperature. I'm no expert, but my gut tells me I should just trash it. My question is, this thing is made of a few transistors and resistors (page 8 of the datasheet, linked above). Do they actually get damaged when connected to negative voltages?

2

I'd not use it in any final circuit. It smells burnt, it clearly got hot enough inside to damage the plastic packaging. You don't even get that from soldering.

3

I agree. You may be able to pull it off in prototyping on a breadboard or something to that nature, but you need to get a new sensor, just to be on the safe side

4

Roger that.