A highlight from last week Artemis 2 mission involved in a An apparently “missing” portion of the Orion capsule’s heat shield. While NASA clarified that nothing abnormal happened, it is a reminder that heat management is critical during missions to extreme environments. Even without astronauts, the high temperatures and pressures inside the spacecraft can damage critical components, especially memory chips that store valuable information about the world beyond Earth.
A new memory chip prototype was recently described Science paper can offer a practical solution to this problem. According to the research team, the chip layout is a small sandwich of extreme materials that can reliably operate at temperatures as low as 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (about 700 degrees Celsius), and likely can operate beyond these temperatures, as this number simply represents the maximum provided by the test equipment.
“You could call it a revolution,” said Joshua Young, the study’s lead author and an engineering professor at the University of Southern California. statement. “This is the best high-temperature memory ever demonstrated.”
A possible chip
A chip is what is called a memristor, or an electrical device that both stores information and performs computational operations. The component is a small “sandwich” of three layers: tungsten on top, hafnium oxide ceramic in the middle, and graphene below. In particular, there is tungsten highest melting point than any metal at 6,192 degrees Fahrenheit (3,422 degrees Celsius), while graphene is a flat sheet of carbon just one atom thick.
The team explained that these unique physical properties allowed the new chip to run on a measly 1.5 volts to process data for more than 50 hours at 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. At that time, the chip operated with more than a billion switching cycles without the need for any external modifications.
The reason conventional chips short out at high temperatures is because the heat forces the topmost layer of the “sandwich” to stick to the bottom layer. However, the surface chemistry of graphene and tungsten is almost like oil and water, Yang explained. In short, it is physically making it difficult to short-circuit the device.
In further studies, the team confirmed that this was indeed happening through electron microscopy and spectroscopy, which gave the researchers an atomic-level look at how the different layers interact.
Memory chips on Venus and elsewhere
Yang cautioned that these robust chips still have a long way to go before they can be seen in practical applications. For example, a “complete computer” requires logic circuits and other electronic components that make a memory chip work as intended, he explained in a statement.
What’s more, the current prototype, as impressive as it is, was handmade in a lab — with no consideration (yet) of how the technology could be scaled up. But the team is hopeful, because discrete materials are not uncommon in the semiconductor industry.
In any case, having a plan opens the way for applications in different places. Note that this chip can probably withstand the extreme temperatures of Venus, more or less was killed any spacecraft that dares to disturb its atmosphere. In addition, the chip could be useful in deep-earth drilling projects or in nuclear and fusion energy systems, the researchers added.
