Schottky, Walter

Schmickler, Wolfgang, 673 Schottky, Walter, 135 Schweizer, E.K., 680 Semenchenko, Vladimir K., 124 Senda, M., 614 Sevcik, Augustin, 202 Scherrer, Paul, 471 Shirakawa, Hideki, 457 Shlygin, Aleksandr I., 173 Siemens, Werner von, 694 Sinha, S.K., 477... 

Schottky, Walter was born July 23, 1886 in Zurich and died March 4, 1976 in Pretzfeld, Germany. He worked under Max Planck in Berlin. He discovered both the electron hole and the Schottky defect. 

Yakov Frenkel showed in 1926 that ideal crystals could not exist at temperatures above the absolute zero. Part of the ions leave their sites under the effect of thermaf vibrations and are accommodated in the interstitial space, leaving vacancies at the sites formerly taken up. Such point defects have been named Frenkel defects. These ideas were developed further by Walter Schottky in 1929, who pointed out that defects will also arise when individual ions or ion pairs are removed from the bulk... 

Walter Haus Schottky (1886-1976) received his doctorate in physics under Max Planck from the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1912. Although his thesis was on the special theory of relativity, Schottky spent his life s work in the area of semiconductor physics. He alternated between industrial and academic positions in Germany for several years. He was with Siemens AG until 1919 and the University of Wurzburg from 1920 to 1923. From 1923 to 1927, Schottky was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rostock. He rejoined Siemens in 1927, where he finished out his career. Schottky s inventions include the ribbon microphone, the superheterodyne radio receiver, and the tetrode vacuum tube. In 1929, he published Thermodynamik, a book on the thermodynamics of solids. Schottky and Wagner studied the statistical thermodynamics of point defect formation. The cation/anion vacancy pair in ionic solids is named the Schottky defect. In 1938, he produced a barrier layer theory to explain the rectifying behavior of metal-semiconductor contacts. Metal-semiconductor diodes are now called Schottky barrier diodes. 

Graf, T. Goennenwein, S.T.B. Brandt, M.S. Prospects for carrier-mediated ferromagnetism in GaN. Walter Schottky Institut, Technische Universitaet Muenchen Garching, Germany. Phys. Status Solidi B Basic Res. 2003, 239 (2), 277-290. 

It is interesting to note that Walter Schottky, a prominent specialist in the field of solid electrolytes, in his 1936 paper thought fuel cells with solid electrolytes to be unpromising, and favored those with salt melts. 

Schottky effect A reduction in the work function of a substance when an external accelerating electric field is applied to its surface in a vacuum. The field reduces the potential energy of electrons outside the substance, distorting the potential barrier at the surface and causing field emisslorL A similar effect occurs when a metal surface is in contact with a semiconductor rather than a vacuum, when It Is known as a Schottky barrier. The effect was discovered by the German physicist Walter Schottky (1886-1976). 

Walter Schottky Institut, Technische Universitat MUnchen Am Coulombwall, D 85748 Garching, Germany Tel. +49 89 289 12758 — Fax +49 89 289 12737 E-mail mbrandt physik.tu-muenchen.de... 

Thin oxide films formed by oxidation of metal surfaces have been center stage in semiconductor research since Walter Schottky formulated his ideas on electronic barriers in solids during the 1920s and 30s. In 1948, Nevill Mott and Nicolas Cabrera embraced these same ideas, in attempts to describe and explain the elementary processes involved in oxide layer formation. Scientists at the Department of Chemical Physics have made use of Schottky s ideas to approach a variety of seemingly disjunct problems, two of which will be outlined below. 

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