NASA Building Massively Heat-Resistant Chips

coondoggie writes "NASA researchers have designed and built a new circuit chip that can take the heat of a blast furnace and keep on performing. Silicon carbide (SiC) chips can operate at 600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit where conventional silicon-based electronics — limited to about 350 C — would fail. The new silicon carbide differential amplifier integrated circuit chip may provide benefits to anything requiring long-lasting electronic circuits in very hot environments such as jets, spacecraft, and industrial machinery. In particular, NASA said SiC applications will include energy storage, renewable energy, nuclear power, and electrical drives."

Comments

Quick, someone warn Apollo Diamond!

[lordofthechia]

In case you didn't know, Apollo has been developing a system to grow diamond wafers through CVD (Carbon Vapor Deposition) for you guessed it, semiconductor use.

Anyway SiC is used in jewelry too (obviously with the same properites), just never realized that it could be used to make microelectronic devices like this. Heh, my wife's engagement ring just got way cooler.

Noise could be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_noise

TFA talked about an analog amplifier. As such, noise is a problem. The higher the temperature a circuit is operated at, the greater the noise. For some low noise applications, it is standard practice to run an amplifier in a liquid nitrogen bath. For most applications, room temperature is ok from a noise standpoint. The temperature TFA talks about would produce about three times the noise of a room temperature circuit. For many applications, that would be way too much.

For some applications, high temperature operation would be hard to avoid. Landing a probe on Venus comes to mind in that regard. The extra noise induced by temperature should cause lots of engineering misery.

350C for Silicon?

[Mateorabi]

Summary claims 350C for traditional silicon, but most silicon based transistor manufacturers list only 125C as the maximum junction temperature. (Which makes the package temp max out at 70-85C.) Makes me question how fast and loose the author was playing with the numbers. Article starts with 600C for SiC, but in the same paragraph they are down to 500C for only < 2000hrs of operation? Hype?

Also, do SiC transitors switch as fast as doped silicon? Otherwise the "make a pentium with it!" ideas might fall flat.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[jank1887]

congratulations. you have no idea what you're talking about.

high temperature boards are ceramic (AlN, Al2O3, HTCC, DBC, etc.) seeing as how they're fired from 1-2000C, they'll be ok.

silver-glass die attaches are okay up to 400-450C. Beyond that, you have high-temp brazes, AuIn, AgAuGe, AgCu, oh and AuNi ok up to 950C.

Circuit!= computer. Chip != microprocessor. SiC chips = power electronics switch or sensor components. sure, you could build a processor out of these, but you could also just go back and build a Pentium out of vac.tubes.

It's a wide-bandgap semiconductor material that is being extensively developed for specific power or harsh environment applications. There currently are no MOS devices (used in your PC). Switching speeds typcially in the kilohertz range, for power conditioning. That chip is a single transistor, about the size of the piece of silicon in your PC. Finally, silicon's only okay to 150-200C. The article should have said 350F, not 350C.

read and learn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_semiconductor_device

Re:imagine the possibilties

[FuzzyDaddy]

Tungsten is used in the current Aluminum metal via process, because it's very good at filling holes. (See Wikipedia for a reference.

I don't know if it's used for copper interconnects (I've been out of that business for years). It might work pretty well - the resistivity is twice that of Aluminum, which will slow down your interconnect performance some.