Slashdot Mirror
Testing New Transistors In Space
Roland Piquepaille writes "Northwestern University researchers have developed new transistors which are currently tested on the International Space Station (ISS) to see how they react to cosmic radiation. These transistors, which are using a new kind of gate dielectric material called a self-assembled nanodielectric (SAND), are exposed to radiation outside the ISS since March 22, 2008, and will stay there for one year. According to the researchers, these new transistors could be used 'on long space missions since early experiments on Earth indicate that the transistors hold up well when exposed to radiation.'"
I'm pretty sure if I stuck some sand out in space, it'll still be sand in a year.
Cool, but I think first contact would be deliciously more awkward if we were still using valves.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Transistors are rediculously cheap when you look at the variable cost of producing them. But when you look at the cost of the manufacturing plants to produce them the price is just skyrocketing. I wouldn't be surprised if Intel funded some of this research or will look to doing it themselves within the next 20 years.
cost of fabircation plants with time: http://www.icknowledge.com/economics/fab_costs.html
if that trend continues and Intel (or other semis) can cough up enough cash I could imagine them making chips out in space, at least for research purposes. (to start) Sure, you deal with radiation and maybe meteors and space junk. But having an earthquake-free, flood-free, zero-g lab would probably help provide us with some new insights into making more resilient, better peroming transistors and microchips.
How about ROCKS: Reduced-Oxide Capacitor Kilowatt Signaling? Or DIRT: Densely-Inductive Resonant Transformers!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
As opposed to the old kind of dielectric, silicon dioxide, which is also known as... sand.
Visit the
We developed "thin film" polymers that acted as a temperature sensor years ago that could applied as coatings on electronics. To make the polymers appropriate sensing, they were implanted with ions in an accelerator and in affect, made them (hence electonics coated) radiation hardened as well. This was specifically developed and funded for satellite technology. If you do the math, you can determine the likely DOD application. I imagine they could be used in a similar application as dielectrics as well.
Because instead of paying for earthquake or flood insurance, something which is well-understood and known to work against hazards which happen infrequently, we want to spend about $10,000 a pound to lift the entire facility into orbit, where it will be exposed to total-loss failure constantly, for the life of the facility. But with the $20 billion terrestrial plant moved into space at the costs of hundreds of billions of dollars, at least it will be secure from floods and earthquakes! We'll just replace the miniscule threat of floods/earthquakes with the threat of, well, whatever kills it will probably be pretty unique -- a miniscule design flaw in a pressure seal, a one-off bug in control code, there are a billion possible things that can go wrong and they all spell TIME FOR A NEW PLANT. And estimating that risk? Well, assuming we're as "successful" protecting the fab plant as we are at protecting our shuttle pilots, there will only be a 2% chance or so of each flight to it blowing up.
And we're doing this to... save money.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
they're called relays.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I don't think the processors are what they should be worried about. I mean yeah, it flips a 0 or 1 and your ship blows up cuz of corrupted signals to certain parts but still, the humans inside need to be shielded from the radiation too! And I know all computers can't necessarily be inside a space vehicle but if they spent time making really, really good shielding, they could put it on everything inside or outside and keep everyone and everything safe and use regular transistors. All I gotta say is can lead be magnetized? That's make good polarized hull plating. That or tritanium or whatever they used on Enterprise (the crappy recent show)
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Some googling revealed the groups publication history. I still fail to spot the relevant publication.
http://chemgroups.northwestern.edu/marks/pubs.html
The research focus of the group suggests that "SANDS" is an organic dielectric for thin film transitors - with either organic or transparent inorganic semiconductor channel. This kinds of transistors are still very much in research stage and have only found very limited commercial applications. The most probably use would be in displays.
We are talking about devices which are >3 orders of magnitude large and slower than those used in modern CPUs. The press release alludes to "intel CPUs", which could not be further off and is grossly misleading. This is a completely different application.
Yes our new transistor design has held up well after being bombarded with radiation for the past year. Alas our human crew didn't stand up so well. But our space ship survived! Success!
The article doesn't say what energy range of cosmic radiation they are concerned about. If only very high energies, these are mostly the non-solar variety of cosmic radiation and the flux of these does maximize during solar minimum conditions (where we are now). In that case, they are testing at the right time. However, if these beasts are sensitive to lower-energy radiation such as that produced by energetic solar flares, levels of this radiation are now at their lowest point in the solar cycle. I've seen this before - test something in space at solar minimum and then be surprised when the production model fails when it is launched into solar maximum conditions.