I tried to read the Wikipedia article on radiation hardening electronics, but I couldn’t understand it when it tried to explain how radiation effects electronics. So explain like I’m 5, how does radiation effect electronics?
Bonus question, how does radiation hardening work?
In: Physics
Electronics is a wide casting term for many kinds of devices and components that operate on the principles of electrity, the flow of electrons
Radiation is a wide casting term for anything that radiates energy from a source.
Some kinds of radiation, particularly ones like high energy ionizing radiation, will cause changes in the way that materials behave in relation to electricity. If a electrical component is supposed to behave one way and radiation changes it to behave in some other way, then obviously the electronic machine is broken. If your machine is supposed to sense a light and make a beep, but radiation changes it from making a beep to making a honk, then your light beeper machine is broken
The mechanism that this happens varies by what kind of radiation and what kind of electrical component. Your kitchen microwave is a machine that emits microwave radiation. You work it by putting a cup of water inside, hitting start, and the machine emits microwave radiation to heat up your cup of water. Let’s say you instead put a light bulb inside. The microwave radiation will interact with the materials in the light bulb instead. It will have several kinds of effects on the light bulb. In the end, it may or may not break the light bulb by changing the way the materials in the light bulb interact with electricity.
Hardening is the change of design of a component to try to counter the effects of radiation on your component. Depending on what kind of radiation and what your component is supsiptible to, there will be different ways of hardening, such as shielding with materials, increasing the size of wires, different ways of laying down the wires
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