High temperature passive components for commercial and military applications

When designing electronics for high temperature, harsh environment applications, whether they are for distributed control of aircraft gas turbine engines or for commercial mining equipment, one generally requires passive support components as well as active devices. Although power switching transistors and integrated circuits usually get a lot of press and journal coverage, the commercial availability of passive components quickly becomes a critical supporting technology that may make or break an entire system approach. This paper presents a representative cross section of high temperature passive component characterization data for device types needed by many applications. Device types represented include both small signal and power resistors and capacitors. Specific problems encountered with the employment of these devices in harsh environments is illuminated for each family of components