Phil Neudeck, Electronics Engineer, NASA’s John Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH

Neudeck: That’s a really good question. We mentioned in the press release the three obvious applications that have existed for a number of years (aerospace and automotive engine sensors, oil and natural gas exploration, robotic exploration of Venus). The circuits that those people need are certainly going to be the first circuits that get done. In the nearer term, for us here at NASA, we’re interested in signal processing and signal conditioning electronics in a sensor for hot environments. One of the things we plan to do is make an operational amplifier and try to integrate it with a pressure sensor to get a good, high-resolution pressure measurement out of an engine ground test that people couldn’t do before. That’s one of our shorter-term goals.

We’re also developing some digital logic circuits. We’re looking to try and make some state machines maybe, for doing some harsh environment intelligence or harsh environment control electronics for something that could be used in a Venus probe mission or something like that. Those are all mission-driven. My approach to semiconductors is, you can buy semiconductor chips for your cell phone and you can buy semiconductor chips for your computer, but all the semiconductor chips you can buy are application-driven. That’s really the direction we’re headed. Now that we’ve shown we can make an integrated circuit with silicon carbide that lasts a good long time at 500° C, for the people who need specific functions we can now design and build that kind of a circuit nominally. I say nominally because it wouldn’t be us; we would do a tech transfer and a company would build it.

The technology translates to a lot of other applications. We, for the first time, have shown that we can make a 500° C integrated circuit chip and have it last an unusually long time. Now people will say, “Hey, I can use this circuit in my 500° C application.” So what we’ve done is we’ve shown the building blocks of how to do it and the applications are the ones that we know of. I think there are applications we don’t know of, and that’s where it goes after this, in my opinion.

NTB: In the future, when the price comes down and the technology matures, could you see this technology being used to eliminate things like heat sinks and cooling devices in everyday things like personal computers, or would this be too exotic to apply to those types of devices?

Neudeck: Well, that’s a long way away! My train of thought is not necessarily on a personal computer but just to get the cost low enough and mass fabrication high enough to get into the automotive market. That’s a very cost-sensitive market. There are places on an automobile where I think this technology will come in a lot sooner than I think it will come into a PC. Again, silicon is awfully cheap and it just seems like it’s a long way before silicon carbide gets cost competitive with it in a room-temperature ambient application.