Assessment of Nanosystems for Space Applications

Paper number

IAC-07-C2.8.03

Author

Ms. Lise Bilhaut, CEA, France

Coauthor

Mr. Laurent Duraffourg, France

Year

2007

Abstract

In the last decade, Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) have been developed using technology coming from the microelectronics industry. Applicability of this technology to spacecrafts has been established through various flight demonstrators. Advantages of MEMS are their extremely low size and mass, allowing for mass saving, redundancy scheme or graceful degradation, their low power consumption, and in some case their improved performances. A foreseen application of MEMS in space system is Radio Frequency switches, to build switch matrices or phased array antennas for the communication subsystem. Indeed, improving communication scheme with spacecraft is important not only for basic station keeping, but for applications such as Global Positioning System or telecommunication of data to location where earth-based systems would be too expensive (e.g. rural mountainous areas) or even impossible (e.g. internet access in commercial flights). 

Advances in semiconductor technology enable to move microsystems one step forward, or rather downward, to Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (NEMS), i.e. systems whose minimum feature size is a few tens of nanometres. Using NEMS instead of MEMS or bulkier systems is a good opportunity not only in term of mass, space and power saving. Reducing dimensions permits to use new materials such as carbon nanotubes and to take advantage of properties that were useless or even disadvantageous in microsystems. For instance one can think of new bistability schemes for a movable nanostructure, such as equilibrium between contact forces (van der Waals) and the spring force of the structure itself. Bistability is useful in systems using nano-switches, where energy is then spent only for the commutation.

However one should be careful about the envisioned applications of NEMS, since they have also inherent limitations. The purpose of this paper is to explore their applicability to space systems through diverse potential applications such as accelerometers, pressure sensors, switches, nano-resonator and nano-mechanical memories. For example, in term of RF NEMS, some demonstrated advantages such as low power consumption should remain in NEMS; however, a strong limitation in power handling or in isolation might be limiting factors. Another illustration is nano-mechanical memories, whose main envisioned advantage is a naturally radiation-hardness while keeping a high integration density.

If the usefulness of NEMS is still to demonstrate on a short term, with application-based technology development, on the long term, NEMS will certainly find applications in sensor networks that might be used for advanced planetary exploration.

Abstract document

IAC-07-C2.8.03.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-07-C2.8.03.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.