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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Jun 17 2013, 01:12 PM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 20 Joined: 19-March 13 Member No.: 6897 |
Power draw is a huge issue, because you can't do CMOS. Memory draws a ton of power, so even if you can build a big chip, you would need a very large power source. Which is a pretty big problem on the surface of Venus, where very little light gets through, your cold end for a heat engine is already nearly as high as the hot end for MMRTG.
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Jun 17 2013, 09:13 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 127 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 291 |
Doesn't seem to me that high temperature memory is that far behind IC's. As someone mentioned before, TI is selling an off-the-shelf flash memory unit that is rated up to 210 C currently. I've seen some research documents that refer up to 300 C memory units in lab tests being run now, so the OTS max temperature should keep pushing up over the next few years.
EDIT: and I now see this note by Raytheon that they are working on a SiC based CMOS rated at 450C. So why can't we do CMOS on Venus? This might be of interest - a report by Honeywell on the challenges (and solutions) for building 250 C rated ICs, that goes into memory solutions as well. -- IC related Bonus - found this paper describing the results of actual testing at 500C with a custom IC built by NASA. Think I missed this on my last review of papers on high temperature ICs. |
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Jun 18 2013, 07:22 PM
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#4
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 20 Joined: 19-March 13 Member No.: 6897 |
... EDIT: and I now see this note by Raytheon that they are working on a SiC based CMOS rated at 450C. So why can't we do CMOS on Venus? ... IC related Bonus - found this paper describing the results of actual testing at 500C with a custom IC built by NASA. Think I missed this on my last review of papers on high temperature ICs. A quote from the NASA paper: "While silicon electronics experience clearly demonstrates that complementary MOSFET (CMOS) technology is desired for implementing integrated circuits, development of the necessary high electrical quality gate-insulators that would enable long-term 500 °C operation of SiC MOSFETs will likely prove elusive for many years to come [21]." |
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