High-Temp Electronics For Venus Exploration, recent advances |
High-Temp Electronics For Venus Exploration, recent advances |
Mar 13 2013, 03:36 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 127 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 291 |
(MOD NOTE: Started a new topic for this discussion to continue. Please remember the 'no sci-fi engineering' provision of rule 1.9. Have fun!)
Also, since I'm thinking about surface operations on Venus, the state-of-the-art in high temperature electronics has advanced quite far in the past decade. Its now possible to buy off the shelf chips from vendors designed to operate at the 250-300 C range. Meanwhile basic functionality has been tested at and beyond the temperatures needed for long-term surface operations on Venus: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/SiC/ http://www.gizmag.com/extreme-silicon-carb...ctronics/16410/ http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/SiC/publicatio...Contact2010.pdf Another decade or so and a long-term Venus lander could be possible with (practically) off the shelf electronics! |
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Apr 8 2013, 03:00 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 127 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 291 |
The Solder question is very interesting. Looking into the state of the art for down-hole operations, it seems the solders used are at the very edge of being useful in their current applications (150-200 C) - for COTS it seems the mix of 5% tin, 93.5% lead, and 1.5% silver is useful up to ~250 C.
Beyond that point it seems that we're off into specialty solders for research projects - I see references to Aluminum being used (692 C melting point), though I imagine that's hard to work with (and how long will it last?). I do see a recent announcement of a cheaper solder of gold-silver-germanium which may fill the gap (ceiling of 350 C) - which if it does take off commercially would get COTS printed circuit boards right on the edge of being useful for a Venus mission with minimal cooling. Also, figured I'd throw in some references to some off the shelf ICs that I found while looking into this - I see references from TI for a PCB rated at up to 250 C (and down to -55 C). Honeywell claims they have an IC that is rated for 5 years operation at 225, and that their max temp is close to 300 C. Amazing how far they've come in the past decade. EDIT - and it may be moving a lot farther. Just found this Department of Energy grant to United Silicon Carbide to demonstrate an electronic sensor package for downhole operations that runs at 500C (!). Based off the linked abstract, they were able to demonstrate a working package... |
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