Nanoelectronics and nanosensors for space exploration
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Introduction The revolution in nanomaterials over the past two decades is expected to have an impact on all economic sectors, as materials science is fundamental to technology development in most application domains. Space exploration is no exception, with miniaturization of the payload, electronics, and other components being critical to reduce the cost of space missions. It costs nearly USD$25,000 to lift 1 kg to near-Earth orbit and about an order of magnitude more for distant planetary missions. The impetus to reduce the volume and mass of every conceivable item associated with a space mission is thus clear. The most recent robotic mission to Mars featured a small car-sized rover called Curiosity with a variety of instruments and cameras. It is natural to expect rovers with progressively smaller sizes—about the size of a golf cart next to a shopping cart and even smaller in the future—but without any loss of functionality. Thus, increased functionality per unit weight is the goal to reduce the cost of future exploration missions. Compared to their bulk counterparts, nanomaterials offer unique and improved properties, and the anticipated benefits have been well-documented. Nanomaterials, nanosensors and instrumentation, microcraft, micro/nanorobotics, nano–micro– macro integration, nanomanufacturing, and astronaut health management are six areas recently identified to benefit from nanotechnology research.1 Since most of these areas are of
interest to various other US agencies and have societal applications as well, there is significant literature in all of these fields without explicitly connecting to aerospace applications. The present article reviews nanoelectronics and nanosensors in the context of space exploration needs.
Nanoelectronics All types of electronic components used in space missions, especially memory and logic devices, are typically a few generations behind the state of the art because of the need to assess their radiation tolerance and package the system appropriately prior to deployment in mission payloads. Three major categories2 of radiation-induced damage to semiconductor devices have been identified in space: single-event effect (SEE), total ionizing dose (TID), and displacement damage (DD). An SEE due to a collision with a single energetic particle can take on many forms, such as single-event upsets (transient pulses or bitflips), which are soft errors and nondestructive and singleevent latchups (damagingly high operating current). Both SEEs and TID result from ionizing radiation. Whereas an SEE can cause instantaneous failure, TID is a long-term effect that can lead to a shift in the threshold voltage of the device and increase the leakage current as well as cause failure of devices. DD is related to the displacement of atoms or the generation of defects in the lattice of an irradiated material
M. Meyyappan, NASA Ames Research Center, USA; [email protected] Jessica E. Koehne, NASA Ames Research Center, USA; [email protected] Jin-Woo Han, NASA Ames Research Center, USA; jin-woo.han
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