surface barrier 1953 inspect the completed assembly
# Inspect the Completed Assembly: Two Risks Between Leads, Not One
Every concern this process has addressed since step eleven was about getting something right inside the device — alignment, timing, contact formation, bonding budgets. This inspection checks something categorically different: whether the two finished leads, now routed out of an assembly built around a membrane only a few micrometers thick, are safe both electrically and mechanically now that the device is complete. A device that passed step twenty-one's gain measurement can still fail this inspection in either of two independent ways this process has never had to check together before.
## 1. Lead Separation Still Has to Hold Off the Device's Own Operating Voltage
V_breakdown ≈ E_air · d_separation
As in every earlier device this project has documented, the air gap between the emitter and collector leads sustains a voltage roughly proportional to its own length, scaled by air's dielectric strength E_air. A lead separation adequate for a bench continuity check can still be inadequate once the device is biased at its full rated collector voltage — identical physics to every prior series' lead-clearance concern, unaffected by anything specific to jet-etching or electroplating.
## 2. Real Diagram: Electrical Clearance Is Only Half of What This Step Checks
## 3. A Lead Routed Across the Membrane Reintroduces Step Sixteen's Fracture Limit
sigma_membrane,routing = (T_leadsin theta_lead)/(A_membrane) < sigma_fracture
A lead's own tension T_lead, if routed at an angle theta_lead that carries any component of force across the membrane rather than purely along the rigid frame surrounding it, reintroduces exactly the fracture-stress limit step sixteen's rinse procedure was built to respect — except now the stress source is permanent mechanical routing rather than a transient rinse jet. This is the check no bulk-wafer device in this project's histories has ever needed, because no earlier device's finished geometry included a membrane thin enough for its own leads to threaten it after assembly is otherwise complete.
## Inspect the Completed Assembly's Place in the Process Lineage
Inspecting the completed assembly is step twenty-two of Philco's surface-barrier process, immediately after the contacted element has been checked for gain and before the device is encapsulated. It carries forward the lead-clearance check this project's earlier series already established, and adds a second check unique to this device's own geometry: confirming that neither lead's physical routing places tension across the membrane that could crack it after assembly is otherwise finished. Step twenty-three, encapsulating the device, is the step that permanently locks in whatever this inspection confirms or fails to catch.