Component Technology and Design Parameters – 1000 words IT essay

‘Component Technology and Design Parameters’

The biggest impact we have had on our society is semi conductors. This has led to the micro processor chips in computers being made.

Computer processor.

This is the latest technology R8000 microprocessor chip for computers and it replaces the old micro processors by its new chip technology that has an advanced instruction set architecture.

This is the biggest advancement we have had in our society and the semiconductors are at the centre of everything we use today. Semi conductors now use silicon, and that has started ‘Silicon valley’.

Silicon in the periodic table.

In the silicon lattice all the silicon atoms bond together and this makes a silicon crystal an insulator rather than a conductor.

Metals can conduct electricity because of free electrons that can move between atoms and electricity is the flow of electrons.

The diode is the easiest semiconductor and it allows current to flow one way only. It allows electrons to only pass one way. The P & N Type aren’t conductors alone but the negative electrons get attracted to the positive of the battery and the positive holes in the P-Type get attracted to the negative terminal of the battery.

A transistor is created using three layers, a diode is two layers. These are created as a NPN or a PNP sandwich. A transistor is a switch or an amplifier. The transistor gets its switching by applying current to the centre layer. The silicon chip is a piece of silicon that will hold thousands of transistors, when all the transistors act as switches they produce Boolean gates and then you can create microprocessor chips and this is the basics of all our electronic components and technology today. Nowadays the electronic companies can put tens of millions of transistors onto a single chip, this process is from silicon to the doped silicon to the transistors to the chips and this has made electronic devices and components now so cheap.

Silicon crystals are grown for device production and are produced by the Czochralski process. This is shown as (CZ-Si) it is also the cheapest way to do this.

A puller rod with seed crystal for growing single-crystal silicon by the Czochralski process

Wafers are made of highly pure and defect free single crystalline material. The process for forming crystalline wafers is known as Czochralski growth.

The Czochralski process it is named after the Polish scientist Jan Czochralski, who discovered the method in 1916 while investigating the crystallization rates of metals.

A silicon wafer

2 inch, 4 inch, 6 inch, and 8 inch wafers

Wafers are grown from crystals that have a regular structure, silicon has a diamond structure.

One unit cell of the diamond cubic crystal structure

Capacitors are used in electronic components to store energy when it has been disconnected from the energy. Most electronic devices have capacitors and they help store memory settings.

Various types of capacitors. From left: multilayer ceramic, ceramic disc, multilayer polyester film, tubular ceramic, polystyrene, metallized polyester film, aluminium electrolytic.

Various capacitors. The large cylinders are high value electrolytic types

Different capacitors are used in different devices depending on what the device is used for.

An accelerometer designed at Sandia National Laboratory.

Accelerometers measure acceleration and also gravity induced reaction force. They sense vibration and shock and used a lot in portable electronic devices. MEMS (Micro electro-mechanical systems) capacitors are put onto chips that are used in lots of electronic products such as smart phones, pda’s, iphones and the Nokia N95.

Nokia N95

Wii Remote

Apple has had them fitted to their computers since 2005 and protects the hard disk. Also the new Wii has them installed. A lot are used to detect vibration in cars and buildings.

A film type capacitor that is used in a micro water pump for a washing machine.

Mica capacitors perform extremely well in high
quality audio equipment giving excellent sonic qualities

Paper capacitor

The paper capacitor is made of metal foil and separated by waxed paper.

Ceramic capacitors

Ceramic capacitors use a ceramic dielectric these are made from thin films of metal that are attached to the ceramic.

An ELECTROLYTIC CAPACITOR

Electrolytic capacitors are used when you need a lot of capacitance and they have an electrolyte inside of them. It can be a liquid or it can be dry.

Glass capacitor

Glass capacitors are used for expensive applications; they are stable over a wide range of temperatures. Glass capacitors are used in the design of a lot of military applications.

Super capacitors

These capacitors are made from carbon aerogel and carbon nanotubes. They have an extreme high capacity and can be used instead of recharging batteries. They are used commercially for energy smoothing and can be found in tanks and subermarines for their motor start-ups.

AC capacitors

These capacitors are used to work on mains voltage power circuits and can handle large currents they also have a high DC breakdown voltage. Capacitors are the main component in most electronic hardware today and depending on the use of the application or machine then it all depends on what capacitor is used for the job. This also changes the fabrication and design of the product as the capacitors and their location have to be taken into account. The IC card had to be re-designed to the change because of what the capacitor needed to achieve. In all cases the invention of the capacitor decides the design of the product and its application as without the special capacitor for the job then the machine or application cannot work.

Failure modes

FMEA (Failure Modes and Effect Analysis) is the most used method for analysing electronics. It is a powerful engineering tool. This analysis creates a CIL (Critical Items List) In this list you will find all the failure modes that would have a negative effect on an electronic system.  This system is found in al these areas, Safety engineering, Testability engineering, Maintainability engineering, Logistics engineering, Availability engineering and Design engineering.

This is a list of the failure modes of various components.

Linkography

www.wikipedia.org