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New Approach to Space Electronics

A five-year project led by Georgia Tech has resulted in a novel approach to space electronics that could change how space vehicles and instruments are designed. The new capabilities are based on silicon-germanium (SiGe) technology, which can produce electronics that are highly resistant to wide temperature variations and space radiation. In addition to Georgia Tech, the 11-member team included the University of Arkansas, Auburn University, University of Maryland, University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt University, BAE Systems, Boeing Co., IBM Corp., Lynguent Inc., and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The research was funded by NASA.

Topics:
Aerospace Board-Level Electronics Electronic Components Electronics & Computers Nanotechnology Power Management Semiconductors & ICs Thermal Management

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 my team is engaged in next-generation electronics and in this case we're taking two semiconductors and at the nanoscale engineering them to produce a new type of transistor a silicon germanium transistor which has two key pieces of functionality that don't presently exist one the ability to operate at very low temperatures and to the ability to operate unshielded in a

    00:00:23 radiation environment leveraging that we can then redesign the way electronics is practice in space while it might not seem like it the moon is actually a terrible place to be from a human perspective if I'm in the sunlight I'm at 120 degrees Celsius but if I'm suddenly in the shadow in the dark and now I'm at minus 180 degrees C below zero and that freezes to death and

    00:00:47 virtually anything you'd like to put there including electronics so if you look at the way that we went to the moon and the Apollo missions we obviously put a rover up on there and the later apollo missions the way we did that because there was no such thing as an electronics technology that would operate on the surface of the moon we took a giant oven literally and buried

    00:01:09 all of the immediate electronics inside that of it that's actually what's up on Mars now at the Mars rovers done exactly the same way so that's sort of the business as usual model for NASA huge disadvantages in size weight power and reliability and what we proposed was to develop silicon germanium technology as a as an electronics platform for doing out of the warm box electronic systems

    00:01:34 we had six university partners three industry partners in a wide number of collaborators by the end of this five-year program we ended up using 82 students graduate students we demonstrated a that the technology could do what we said it did and then importantly we developed all of the infrastructure needed for anyone to do electronic design for these types of

    00:01:56 environments using what we developed so some of the things that you would see in the lab downstairs would be specially designed cryogenic test systems that actually will take our electronics down to very low temperatures in this case about a minus 180 degrees C so very very cold and allow us then to electrically exercise them to show that they continue to function across the

    00:02:17 temperature range for which they're intended NASA was on board from minute one they were raved about the results at the end of the day some of our silicon germanium components are up in Earth orbit right now functioning on the International Space Station just as a demonstration vehicle of what we want to do so the next step will be to put this on a you know a Mars mission or a Saturn

    00:02:39 mission or into some satellite system whatever it would happen to go into they're not a single space mission for exploration or discovery that would be done that wouldn't require this type of object in it and that's actually kind of exciting because what we've done from a science and engineering and demonstration perspective could ultimately find its way on all sorts of

    00:03:03 actual NASA missions you