Si Vacuum Transistor Application Chomping at the Bit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator#:~:text=The%20turboencabulator%20or%20turbo-encabulator%20%28and%20its%20later%20incarnations%2C,the%20supposed%20product%20makes%20extensive%20use%20of%20technobabble.

Discussions of Magic

"British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated three adages that are known as ... the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."...

And plausibly any discussion regarding that "magic" indistinguishable from technobabble to those subject to the normal Kondratiev psychological forces. My condolences on your mental strain from reading my proposed discussion topic. I do see technobabble around so your perceiving my intro as yet another instance of a content-free vocabulary construct is understandable and predictable.

To see a nearly practical application of circulating transmission line waveforms which are not monochromatic, search for the founding papers for the Multigig effort to provide lower power chip clock distribution without the usual H-tree buffered clock driver configuration and its associated 1/2cv² losses.

_____________

thewildotter

The question is conspicuous by its absence.

When creating topics one can choose from "topic for discussion" or to "ask a question." I chose "topic for discussion" for higher flexibility. If you feel unfulfilled without a question try any of these and when you do please be explicit wrt which one you chose or invented, otherwise the warning in your signature from Shaw will likely be realized once again:

Does anyone have an opinion on the viability and probable availability schedule of 40kv Silicon Vacuum Transistors ?

or

If you had one of these impressive devices, what clever applications would you enable ?

or

Does anyone have a clue about how to positionally stabilize a waveform on a slow velocity of propagation transmission line loop configuration ? Has anyone heard of adaptively using leakage to achieve the Heavyside criterion for lossy but distiortionless transmission line loops ? Or what conceptual problems did Multigig ignore with their transmission line clock driver scheme which kept it from promptly dominating the clock driver strategy for large, fast random logic chips ?

or

How can I incite SE to post more of his wonderful illustrations and videos which I find highly entertaining and germane despite his frequent cancel culture intent ?

____________

thewildotter

Shiver me timbers.. Same squinty eye, same bulgy arms, same corncob pipe....

____________

thewildotter(Pappy? Hukukukukuk, naw couldn' be !)

Nod to the fringe element....keep walking

This guy is fully qualified to be an electrician:An insulated brain,and a grounded arse...

It was not exactly a trivial task to get to the "Paper #5.2", but I did finally download and read it. The concept of a transistor that can operate at ≈40kV is indeed interesting.

I didn't see anything about how much current the device might handle, and in fact it wasn't clear whether they have actually constructed such a device.

Please keep us informed, especially when such devices become commercially available.

Yeah. I, also, had to struggle a little to retrieve the reference. My only resource leading to my starting this thread was my free email subscription to "Semiconductor Engineering" magazine. I included the link to Semiconductor Engineering in my thread creation post. The passage in the linked article included the reference to International Electron Devices meetings which is not anything I have any info about beyond this reference:

"At IEDM, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital will present a paper on a silicon vacuum transistor technology for use in high-frequency and power device applications."

I followed this link and retrieved a logo with this text alongside:

66th annual International Electron Devices Meeting

I was hoping that CR4 denizens would be more familiar with this activity and perhaps would be attending. So far, no enlightened CR4 personalities have confessed to having such plans. Admittedly I was not explicit about this hope until now so maybe with this new explicitness on my part some will claim knowledge and intentions.

Apart from my interest in using the device when it becomes available, I currently have no more access to any further information flow about the meeting or the device than the references I have already provided.

In the past I have also been interested in using semiconductor electronics to optimize the capabilities of vacuum devices such as using opamps to maintain optimal parameters for rf transmitter tubes both for transmitter applications and for exotic audio amplifiers made with the same vacuum devices. I was also aware some decades ago that some investigators were using similar rf transmitter tubes in combination with semiconductors as drivers for Tesla coils but I was not doing it myself. This, more intimate integration of vacuum and semiconductor circuits is plausibly a major technological leap toward improving any of these applications since the voltage ceiling is similar to more indirect traditional techniques for robust drivers. That is for Tesla coils, traditional drivers include 40kv doorknob capacitors in a first resonant circuit used to inductively power the much larger main traveling wave coil that is usually the visible "stalk" of a Tesla coil.

I included the Tesla references since CR4 participants have discussed these in other threads and I wanted to ride this wave of interest. However...

I am still interested in the other applications. High voltage drivers for, say, electrostatic speakers is an obvious opportunity. My toroidal transmission line might be a way to create a whole new genre of rf transmitter antennae. I also would like to experiment with transmission line coupling to novel flywheels which are hubless and coupled to their energy source and sink with a capacitive motor/generator driver which would benefit greatly by a high power 40kv driver device. In this light, I also am interested in the current handling capability of vacuum transistors.

______________

thewildotter

sync?

I was referring to the source and sink of an energy storage mechanism like a flywheel which acts first as a sink and later as a source. I sometimes also speak of synchronization (abbr. sync) but this time I was not.

A lavatory is where the water goes; here is an example of an energy sink from astrophysics:

______________________________________________________________________

Chapter 3 Sources and Sinks of Energy - Astrophysics Data ...

ads.harvard.edu › books › AbookC03 PDF Feb 3, 2012 — 3. Sources and Sinks of. Energy . . . We have come to that place in the study of stellar structure where we must be mindful of the flow of energy ...

______________________________________________________________________

Synchronization is important for my transmission line loops to positionally stabilize a waveform but that is another topic. The topic here was how to get energy into a flywheel and back out which is a big issue with flywheels since it usually involves a central hub. We do not want any stinkin' central hub in our flywheel because it raises the whole disaster of differential amounts of stretch within the rotor. We want as close to a single major radius(a very thin ring rotor) as possible to avoid differential stretch which tends to destroy the structure of(explode) the rotor. With an evacuated envelope there is also the issue of the rotor stretching and exceeding the available space in the vacuum envelope. I have elegant solutions for the expanding envelope requirement issue as well but that is too big a topic to sink our teeth into at the moment. So, I really did mean sink and not sync in that post.

________________

thewildotter

Here's anoither article on the topic:

https://www.electronicdesign.com/power-management/whitepaper/21148029/electronic-design-this-week-in-powerbites-silicon-vacuum-tubes-electric-motorcycles?oly_enc_id=5821D7411678E8J

As always, I am a day late and several hundred dollars short for obtaining the early info as I had already anticipated. Registration form information re-engages my original plan of just waiting until(and if) a commercial version becomes available before I can justify overtly seeking the details from the normal channels. Thanks for the link. Maybe more details will leak after the virtual meeting.

Usually, I wait until some product becomes a commodity before I actually buy any to breadboard. Sometimes I get samples or development kits if they sound like they might work and are cheap enough to not deter my curiosity. My usual is to wait until they are obsolete and available in huge quantity for super cheap. I am still doing stuff with the dual in-line 74HC14 and HEF4011BP dips I bought by the thousands decades ago. These are actually more fun now that I am using them for transmission line distributed amplifiers and distributed active beverage antennae with dead bug connections. I suppose I will get back to those experiments until 40kv vacuum transistors become more "mature." Maybe my posts will trigger someone else to pursue applications for these newer devices on a more aggressive schedule. I can use my 1N914 discrete diodes(pairs in series reverse installed) as thermally or optically controllable leakage devices to try for adaptive Heavyside distiortionless operation to attempt to implement positionally stabilized waveforms on loops using these far older devices for now. It is amusing how very cheap old stuff can still verify design concepts.

___________

thewildotter

Is X-ray protection needed with such a device?

Good point! 40 kV snd a metal anode does indeed sound like an X-ray source.