Chemotronics and Cryoelectronics
Chemotronics (hemothronick) as a new scientific field emerged at the junction of two areas that are developing: electrochemistry and electronics. At the first stage of its development, chemotronics as a technical branch was called to develop general theoretical and technological principles of construction of electrochemical converters. At the same time, mainly analogs of electronic devices were created, with the difference that the charge carriers were not electrons in a vacuum, gas or solid body, but ions in a solution. This is how electrochemical rectifiers (rectifier), integrators (integrator), amplifiers were created. The mobility of ions in a solution is much lower than the mobility of electrons in a gas or solid, so electrochemical devices are low-frequency in their physical nature, but they also have some advantages over electronic devices.
The prospect of chemotronics development is the creation of information and control systems on a liquid basis, and in the future – biotransformation of information. Further successful development of chemotronics requires fundamental research not only in fluid physics, but also in complex physico-chemical and electrochemical processes occurring in liquids and at the boundary of liquid phases.
Nowadays a number of chemotronic devices have been created based on electrochemical phenomena: rectifier diodes, integrators, amplifiers, electrokinetic transducers, solid-phase electrochemical transducers, etc.
Cryoelectronics (cryogens electronics) is a branch of electronics and microelectronics that includes studies of the interaction of the electromagnetic field with electrons in solids at cryogenic temperatures and the creation of electronic devices based on them. Cryogenic temperatures include temperatures at which deep cooling occurs, i.e. temperatures from 80 to 0K. Various phenomena are used in cryoelectronic devices: the superconductivity of metals and alloys, the dependence of the dielectric permittivity of some dielectrics on the strength of the electric field, the appearance of metals at temperatures below 80 K of semiconductor properties with anomalously high mobility of charge carriers, etc. The principles of cryoelectronics are used to build a number of devices (cryotrons, quantum and parametric amplifiers, resonators, filters, delay lines, etc.). The most common of these devices is the cryotron, which is a switching cryogenic element based on the property of superconductors to change their conductivity by jumping under the influence of a critical magnetic field. Cryotrons function similarly to a key or relay. A cryotron can be in only one of two states: either superconducting or low-conducting.
The transition time of cryotrons from one state to another is a few fractions of a microsecond, which means that this device has a high speed. Cryotrons are micro miniature: up to several thousands of cryotrons can be placed in 1 cm of area. Cryotrons can be used to build cryotronics ICs that perform logic functions, non-destructive readout memory functions, control functions and interconnect functions. However, the need to operate in deep cooling conditions and the associated technological difficulties dramatically limit the use of cryotrons. Amplifiers, the principle of operation of which is based on the use of cryoelectronic phenomena, serve mainly to receive weak microwave signals. They have negligible noise, wide bandwidth (tens of gigahertz) and high gain (up to 10,000). Noise temperatures of cryoelectronic amplifiers reach units and fractions of a kelvin.