Mantooth and Team Featured for Radio Chip Work

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A team of University of Arkansas researchers has garnered international attention for their work in making "radio chips for Hell."

The work of Distinguished Professor Alan Mantooth, doctoral candidate Zeke Zumbro and their team was featured recently in the IEEE Spectrum, the flagship magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

The team collaborated with professor Ana Rusu's team at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology to design an electronic component capable of withstanding temperatures of 500 degrees Celsius.

The full article is titled "Making Radio Chips for Hell," and features the creation of a Mixer IC, a key component of wireless systems, that can function at extremely high tempratures. As a result of this work, Mantooth has been approached to assist in developing electronics to explore the depths of the earth.

From the story:

There are still some places the Internet of Things fears to tread. Researchers at the University of Arkansas and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in Sweden, are building a radio for those places. This month, in IEEE Electron Device Letters, they describe a mixer, a key component of any wireless system, that works just fine from room temperature all the way up to 500 ºC. It's the first mixer IC capable of handling such extremes.

IEEE Fellow and Arkansas professor of electrical engineering Alan Mantooth specializes in electronics for extreme environments. Of several projects "one of the more sexy is trying to put a rover or some sort of instrument on [the surface of the planet] Venus that will last for more than two hours, which is the current record." An high temperature for average day on Venus reaches 467 ºC. But it's a sulfuricheat.

Read the full story in IEEE Spectrum.