Radiation Resistant Circuits Made

More

The conventional electronics we are all familiar with have it pretty easy. Aside from the occasional fall and power surge, our devices do not have to be able to survive much, but there are many other systems that do. Deep space and damaged nuclear power plants are both environments with high levels of ionizing radiation that would fry the normal computer. To keep the silicon circuits working, large quantities of shielding will be installed to protect them, but this is not an ideal solution to the problem.

Another solution is to step away from silicon and semiconductors for circuitry, and instead use mechanical switches. These switches will not be affected by radiation and even high temperatures, but often require a great deal of power to operate, are large compared to semiconductor transistors, and are not as fast as silicon. Researchers at the University of Utah and Case Western Reserve University found a way to mitigate these drawbacks to mechanical switches by making microelectromechanical (MEM) logic gates.

As the name suggests, microelectromechanical devices are small pieces of technology that connect electrical and mechanical forces. By using a MEM system to researchers got the technology to be much smaller than previous mechanical switches, which also brought down energy requirements from 10-20 V to just 1.5 V. Also, by making full 'and' and 'exclusive or' (XOR) logic gates, instead of just switches, the devices are much faster than previous switches.

They may still be larger and slower than silicon logic gates, but this new approach could prove useful in making radiation resistant computers. As the gates physically change according to the signals they receive, ionizing radiation does not damage them like it does silicon transistors. To test this, the researchers placed their gates in the university's nuclear reactor for two hours, and they continued functioning normally. The silicon counterparts also placed in the reactor died within minutes.

• Email Link
• Print News

Comp Dude2 on June 14, 2012 12:57AM Voltage is not a measure of power. reply to this

Guest_Jim_* on June 14, 2012 05:21AM Changed it to "energy requirements." reply to this

Comp Dude2 on June 14, 2012 12:05PM Cool, I was probably being picky but my degree makes me spot these things. reply to this

Guest_Jim_* on June 14, 2012 01:52PM Similar thing happens to me, but not so much with units. reply to this

This news has comment postings disabled because it is now archived.