New type of chips will suicide after being hit with radio waves

Transient electronics are now coming. It could be sensors on farm or perhaps microbots on a spy mission. Their electronic will destroy itself after being subjected to specific radio wave frequencies.

A destroyed microship - Source: Cornell University

Imagine an electronic device that contains sensitive information. And you really really don’t want the information to get into other people’s hands. Or you have some electronic device that served its purpose but it is hard to get to. In both of these cases, you could use a technology that destroys electronics from a distance. And recently we discovered materials that can be used to make electronics but are also solvable by water and a few others that are destroyed by temperature.

But it can also be done in another way. That is exactly why experts of the Cornell University and Honeywell Aerospace company that allows destroying electronic circuits without the need for a human hand to ever touch them. Ved Gund with his team have created a microchip from silicon dioxide, also known as silica, that is polycarbonate package. This package includes microscopic cavities filled with rubidium and sodium bifluoride. These chemicals can cause a reaction that creates a lot of heat and corrosive that will quickly destroy the chip.

Ved Gund - Source: Cornell University

The reactions happen when the chip is subjected to radio waves at a specific frequency. Miniature graphene-nitrite react to the radio waves that separate the chemicals from each other. Once opened rubidium and bifluoride salts react together. The rubidium quickly oxidizes and releases heat evaporating the package. At the same time, the bifluoride salts decompose creating hydrofluoric acid that corrodes the electronic.

Microchips and circuits with this unique self-destructive ability can be the key to a completely new type of electronics – transient electronics. Such technology has a lot of potential not only in protecting sensitive data but in for example in bio-medicine as during the self-destruction no harmful chemicals are being created.

Sources:

• http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/01/engineers-create-new-architecture-vaporizable-electronics