International Conference on High Temperature Electronics (HiTEC 2016)

On the second week of May, Lynn Reed and Bob Abrams went to the HiTEC Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. HiTec is dedicated to high temperature electronics. While there are many applications that require electronics to work at high temperatures, the largest commercial usage has been in the oil industry. Oil exploration is a very expensive endeavor. Being able to put electronics deep underground is necessary in order to determine what is going on a couple miles down where it is quite hot, perhaps 200ºC to 300ºC. The lifetime of electronics can be quite short under these harsh conditions. Tekmos has introduced several state of the art products that are rated at 250ºC with proven operation to over 300ºC (570ºF).

There are applications that also require high temperatures, such as geothermal. Generally, designers make trade-offs between the highest operating temperature and cost. Silicon based parts seem to offer the best trade-off for oil exploration applications. The Tekmos approach can offer the best trade-off because it is silicon based and at the high end of temperatures which can be achieved with silicon.

Unfortunately, oil exploration is in quite a slump because of the lower price of oil. The attendance at the conference was down significantly from prior years due to current economic conditions. The conference was still successful because it is the quality of the contacts made that is important, not the quantity.