Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

What's this?

Status
Not open for further replies.

tansis

New Member
A brain teaser for members...
Can you identify this common electronic device?

I am being ever so slighty cruel...
so a hint or two is only fair....
1> Older versions were much bigger
2> Was more common thirty years ago, but making a comeback!
3> 2nd image is of same device type, but different construction.
4> The images are of modern versions constructed at the nano scale
5> Theory of operation was state of the art fifty years ago

If you do know , please don't spoil it for the others
 

Attachments

  • guess.jpg
    guess.jpg
    15.4 KB · Views: 476
  • guess2.jpg
    guess2.jpg
    22.9 KB · Views: 430
i hink its the inner of transistor / mosfet..

but i'm not sure since my eye doesn't see this all the days..


TKS
 
Mystery device

OK, I'll bite ( & show my ignorance).

1) Tunnel diodes were popular 30 (ok, more like 40) years ago, but there are no contact points in the photos. Looks more like a capacitor.

2) What is the optical magnification ratio of the second picture? (like it helps. just searching for another clue)

3) It's an array of some sort. Arrays are usually employed to magnify some property, while minimizing "undesirable" side effects.

4) The second picture looks like a semiconductor photo. It says "look at what we can do", possibly a milestone at that particular point in time?

5) I'm clueless too :) .

- Claude
 
Ron H said:
I know what it is.
Actually, I sorta cheated. I had an idea, so I confirmed it with a little Googling.
[edit]
On second thought, maybe I don't know. I didn't even look at the first picture. The second one I know - at least I know of an identical structure. I didn't think they were available 30 years ago, in any form.
 
Clues

Another approach to a brain teaser like this is to do a search on the author and see what topics evoke the greatest personal interest. Tansis has an interest in esoteric things like magnetrons, PIR sensors, etc., mixed with the usual interest in the more mundane aspects of electronics. I'm not inclined to search the 179 matches, but a clue may lurk among them...
 
hmm, the pictures mean nothing to me.

however, the clues tell me something. The thing that jumps to mind are valves. These were used in old valve amplifiers, but seem to be coming back recently. I imagine that the older valves were alot bigger...

just my thoughts.

Tim
 
Well everybody, remarkable as it seems old ways of doing things are being given a new lease of life , this time wet etched in silicon at the nano scale. The humbe field emission triode. Gone are the days of glowing glass tubes (sigh) well almost, one new application of these devices are flat/thin dislpays..[Special thanks to Ron H for the link]
**broken link removed**
What makes this world of "Vacuum Microelectronics" really exciting though is the basic physics, especially when one applies it to the world of computers, the speed of an electron through a vacuum device is some two orders of magnitude faster than that of silicon (roughly 10^7 cm/sec)
The silicon over-clockers will become an endangered breed!
Sadly, dont rush down to your local computer store just yet, it's all still very much experimental, though the future has a habit of sneaking up on us!.... Dont believe me? Well somebody at the DOD in the states signed a check in march for a TWO and HALF TERRA-BYTE solid state hard drive!
(solid state - all memory chips , no moving parts)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top