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Well for electronic components your basic three chioces for states of matter are solid, liquid, and gas.

Silicon crystals are naturally solid-state, car batteries and most can capacitors are liquid-state with their electrolyte, leaving many vacuum tubes no other choice but to be gaseous-state.

Now these air chips don't have any electrolyte so that rules out liquid, and all the components are solid materials so the component itself is actually solid-state, and so are other MEMS devices, even though they have moving parts.

Like an electric motor which is just iron, copper, and steel, a key solid-state electrical component.

It's still just a motorized fan.



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Solid state really refers to not using gas plasma (vacuum tubes). Personally I would call MEMS devices like this solid state, even though it has moving parts. Everything in it is in the "solid" (physics solid) state, there is no liquid or gas involved.

Solid state originates in solid state physics, as opposed to physics involving liquids or gases. The MEMS on the device are moving due to solid state physics.

Does MEMS count as solid state or is it also seen as a moving part?

It's quite normal to be confused what solid state means. For example vacuum tubes don't have moving parts and aren't considered solid state.

Maybe falls in the MEMS category. For example we consider accelerometers to be solid state but they aren't.

A lot of times it's used to say no parts that move or slide relative to eachother. Things like piezo transducers and DLP mems chips are still considered solid state. Certainly a fuzzy line at best

I think "solid state" is being used as meaning "no moving parts".

Do you mean "solid state" or "steady-state?"

I'm a little confused by these two quotes.

"The first ever solid state thermal solution" "Inside AirJet are tiny membranes that vibrate at ultrasonic frequency"

How is it solid state if it has moving parts?


> It's not a strictly zero-fluid solid-state chemistry, instead utilizing a semi-solid layout that includes solid material suspended in a liquid electrolyte.

I always interpreted "solid state" to mean "neither clanky nor sloshy"

I'm being super pedantic here, but see how you said hybrid before solid state in your third sentence when explaining it? That's basically what I just suggested would be a clearer name.

Is it just me, or is "state of matter" less of set of discrete boxes and more of a continuum with several parameters to describe a "state"? This gel, anyway, pretty much seems like a solid with a peculiar set of values for brittleness and flexibility.

Was going to make some cynical comment about how it's just a new liquid/gas that we don't know enough about to be scared of yet. Sounds like it's a solid material that generates cooling from material stresses sounds similar to piezoelectric.

There does not have to exist a solid material with the properties of a gas.

Matter is stuff.

Condensed matter is stuff that is not gas.

Soft matter is shorthand for soft condensed matter, which is stuff that is not gas nor solid.

Fluidics, liquid crystals, polymers are examples of soft matter.

Source: I am a soft matter physics PhD that focused on liquid crystal phase characterization.


My understanding was that those materials are more like electric motors and fully assembled control PCBs, not sheets of steel and spools of insulated wire.

Does solid state imply it won’t wear out? That alone would be a huge deal.

Wasn't dlp labeled as solid state even though it had spinning mirrors?
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