Electronics at Space!

This might sound cooler for some people than to other, but I'll try to break things through, so even if you're not REALLY into this kind of thing, maybe you can learn one thing or two in here :)

A videogame, my watch, your computer/phone you are using to read this content... all of these are our everyday electronics devices, that we have here on Earth. Have you ever asked yourself if these devices would also work if yo take them to the Moon, to Mars or anywhere else in outer space? No? That's ok, I've never asked this question myself before either, but I was very disappointed when I found out that the answer is NO. They DO NOT work in space.

But still there is a reason, and also a solution, otherwise all of the space missions would be fake (they aren't fake, trust me) since they depend of many devices for navigation and communication. In this page I will go over topics explaining why regular electronics don't work in outer space and then what we can do to overcome that.

Radiation as an Electrical Threat

First I want to introduct with a fact, electronics use Silicon. Although, in the electronics industry it is not interesting to simply use pure silicon crystals, as they by themselves don't have any special property.

There's a process we can do to silicon that is named Doping. This process is done by adding impurities to the silicon, which will then change its properties as you can see in figure below. The most common impurities used are Boron and Phosphorus, which will change the silicon into n-type (negatively charged) and p-type (positively charged) silicon crystals, respectively.