It's a combination of chemistry and geometry (and other factors). Maybe there's some luck.
There are ICs and components built for operating in extreme environments, like drilling. You can get SiC (silicon carbide) chips that operate above 200°C (473K), if that's important to you. There are also various semiconductors that are worse than silicon at handling high temperatures, like germanium. Old germanium circuits sometimes don't even work correctly on a hot day.
If we lived at 200K, I'm sure that there's a host of semiconductor materials which would be available to us which don't work at 300K.
well, depends how you define lucky. at cryogenic temperature, the leakage current of a transistor is so small that you virtually don't require DRAM refresh. I tested DRAM cells with discharge times of hours, and the transistor was not at all optimized. See https://www.rambus.com/blogs/part-1-dram-goes-cryogenic/ (not my work)
There is a bit of luck in even having any viable materials that work at the required temperature to choose from.
For example, humanity hasn't been able to find a single appropriate material for a superconductor at room temperature/atmospheric pressure despite significant research, but a civilization living below 100 K has a myriad of options to choose from. Superconductors are high technology to us, but if your planet is cold enough then superconducting niobium wire would be a boring household item like copper wire is for us.
It’s lucky in the northern hemisphere there is an easily recognizable star pointing almost exactly at the North Pole, which makes navigation much easier.
It’s lucky some available material worked the right way to make a transistor.
It’s lucky some person smart enough to make that work got to work on that.
History is full of lucky coincidences like that. How many Einsteins have died out in the jungle, without access to our scientific knowledge or a way to add to it? For most of history and partly still today, being a scientist wasn’t possible for just about anyone, you had to be from the right family. It’s all about luck.
klodolph|3 years ago
There are ICs and components built for operating in extreme environments, like drilling. You can get SiC (silicon carbide) chips that operate above 200°C (473K), if that's important to you. There are also various semiconductors that are worse than silicon at handling high temperatures, like germanium. Old germanium circuits sometimes don't even work correctly on a hot day.
If we lived at 200K, I'm sure that there's a host of semiconductor materials which would be available to us which don't work at 300K.
YakBizzarro|3 years ago
8jy89hui|3 years ago
somebodynew|3 years ago
For example, humanity hasn't been able to find a single appropriate material for a superconductor at room temperature/atmospheric pressure despite significant research, but a civilization living below 100 K has a myriad of options to choose from. Superconductors are high technology to us, but if your planet is cold enough then superconducting niobium wire would be a boring household item like copper wire is for us.
tinus_hn|3 years ago
It’s lucky some available material worked the right way to make a transistor.
It’s lucky some person smart enough to make that work got to work on that.
History is full of lucky coincidences like that. How many Einsteins have died out in the jungle, without access to our scientific knowledge or a way to add to it? For most of history and partly still today, being a scientist wasn’t possible for just about anyone, you had to be from the right family. It’s all about luck.
H8crilA|3 years ago
p1mrx|3 years ago