Cool Technology:  NASA makes long-lived high temperature electronic device

Electronics run better cold - just ask any hard core gamer using an over-clocked, water-cooled gaming PC to run the latest first-person shooter game.  While the truth of “electronics run better cold” is actually a matter of the laws of physics, NASA is developing truly high-temperature electronics out of silicon carbide instead of standard silicon.

Let’s say you want need to get accurate measurements out of a jet engine or a hot battery or fuel cell.  Normally you have to deal with long cables to get the measurement device’s signal out to the electronics measuring the signal.  This is because the electronics will burn up, almost literally, and stop working in seconds or minutes if they’re exposed to high temperatures.

Not for much longer.

NASA has built a new electronic device called a “difference amplifier” out of silicon carbide, a very temperature stable material, and has proven that it will work for 1,700 hours at 500 degrees Celsius.  For the metrically-challenged, that’s about 930 degrees Fahrenheit.  Or, to put it into more perspective, that’s 5x the normal maximum operating temperature for commercial electronics like computers, 4x the normal maximum for industrial components, and it represents a 100x increase in the lifetime of the previously best high-temp electronics operating at such temperatures.

In other words, this will eventually be a bid deal.  And it’s just plain cool (er, hot?).