Shockley transistor

The Shockley involved in this symposium was ihe same William Shockley who had participated in the invention of the transistor in 1947. Soon after that momentous event, he became very frustrated at Bell Laboratories (and virtually broke with his coinventors, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen), as depicted in detail in a rivetting history of the transistor (Riordan and Hoddeson 1997). For some years, while still working at Bell Laboratories, he became closely involved with dislocation geometry, clearly as a means of escaping from his career frustrations, before eventually turning fulltime to transistor manufacture. 

The immense importance of Si in transistor technology stems from the chance discovery of the effect in Ge at Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, in 1947, and the brilliant theoretical and practical development of the device by J. Bardeen, W. H. Brattain and W. Shockley for which they were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics. A brief description of the physics and chemistry underlying transistor action in Si is given in the Panel (p. 332). 

William Shockley (seated), John Bardeen (standing, left), and Waller H. Braltain doing transistor research at Bell Telephone Laboratories (New York, 194S). (Corbis Corporation)... 

The study of electrons trapped in matter (commonly termed solid state ) led eventually to the invention of the transistor in 1947 by Walter Brattain, John Bardeen, and William Shockley at Bell Laboratories, and then to the integrated circuit hy Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby a decade later. Use of these devices dominated the second half of the twentieth century, most notably through computers, with a significant stininlus to development being given by military expenditures. 

The start of the solid-state electronic industry is generally recognized as 1947 when Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley of Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrated the transistor function with alloyed germanium. The first silicon transistor was introduced in 1954 by Texas Instruments and, in 1956, Bell Laboratories produced the first diffused junction obtained by doping. The first-solid state transistor diodes and resistors had a single electrical function and were (and still are) known as discrete devices. 

In 1948 William Bradford Shockley (1910-1989), who is considered the inventor of the transistor, and his associates at Bell Research Laboratories, Walter Houser Brattain (1902-1987) and John Bardeen (1908-1991), discovered that a crystal of germanium could act as a semiconductor of electricity. This unique property of germanium indicated to them that it could be used as both a rectifier and an amplifier to replace the old glass vacuum tubes in radios. Their friend John Robinson Pierce (1910-2002) gave this new solid-state device the name transistor, since the device had to overcome some resistance when a current of electricity passed through it. Shockley, Brattain, and Bardeen all shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. 

The 1956 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley for their work on developing transistors. We consider briefly here an important class... 

The first solid-state transistor was made not from silicon but from the element below it in the Periodic Table germanium. This substance is also a semiconductor, and can be doped in the same way. William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen devised the germanium transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey in 1947. It was a crude and clunky device (Fig. VJa) - bigger than a single one of today s silicon chips, which can house millions of miniaturized transistors, diodes, and other components (Fig. Vjb). The three inventors shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956. 

The first transistor, made by Bardeen,37 Shockley, and Brattain38 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1947, was a point-contact transistor (Fig. 9.17) [18-21],... 

The first transistor, a point-contact transistor, invented by Bardeen, Brat-tain, and Shockley in 1947 [18,19]. Adapted from Terman [5]. 

W. Shockley, The theory of p-n junctions in semiconductors and p-n junction transistors, Bell Syst. Tech. J. 28 435H 89 (1949). 

W. Shockley, Unipolar Field-effect transistor, Proc. IRE 40 1365-1376 (Nov 1952). 

The first transistor is invented by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley at Bell Labs... 

First transistor built (point-contact form) by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley of Bell Telephone Labs Junction transistor developed to avoid reliability problems with point-contact transistor... 

According to the IEEE standard test methods for the characterisation of OFETs [26], the Shockley equations for insulated gate field effect transistors (IGFETs) are used to approximate the field-indueed drain eurrent in the organic material between the drain and source contaets. It should be reeom-mended that the following assumptions form the basis of the applieability of the equations ... 

The control of charge flow by an electric quantity is a key issue of today s electronics. The concept to electrically specify the conductivity of a resistor by pure solid state effects was already proposed in 1928 by Julius Edgar Lilien-feld in Germany [1], The basic idea was to control the charge carrier density in a solid by an electric field, applied over a third electrode. However, there is no evidence for a practical realisation by Lilienfeld. The first report about a pure electrically controllable solid state device was the well know Germanium transistor from William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain [2]. The new term transistor was later explained as a combination of the words transconductance and varistor . Meanwhile a broad variety of different transistor concepts exists, which, however, can be mainly subdivided in two basic operational principles ... 

Of course these equations do not account for a field- and charge carrier density dependent mobility, which will result into slight deviations in the transistor characteristics. A similar model which is extended by the field dependent mobility was presented by Smits et al. [4]. Furthermore, the transistor subthreshold behaviour is not represented. Nevertheless, the extended Shockley equations are quite useful for a qualitative interpretation of obtained experimental results. 

He moved to Harvard to take his Ph.D. and from there moved to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to teach solid-state physics. From 1953 Kohn had a series of summer jobs at Bell Laboratories (at that time the outstanding centre for solid state research) where he worked with Shockley, the inventor of the transistor. 

This invention ignited a huge research effort in solid state electronics across the world. Bardeen and Brattain received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956, together with Shockley, for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect. Shockley had developed a so-called junction transistor in 1949, which was built on thin slices of different types of semiconductor materials pressed together. The junction transistor was easier to understand theoretically, could be manufactured more reliably, and became the preferred semiconductor device, which ushered in the modem electronic era. ... 

In an interesting article entitled "On the Statistics of Individual Variations of Productivity in Research Laboratories" about why some inventors invent a lot and some people do a lot of other creative things W. Shockley — the Nobel Prize winner for the transistor (Proceedings of the IRE, for March 1957), analyzes why it is that some inventors do a great deal and some do very little. Most of us do nothing. He discusses the relation between quality and quantity of output of creative people, and he comes to some nonobvious conclusions. It is probedJly the best article ever written on the subject, cind it backs some of the things that are discussed in this book. 

In 1947, a device consisting of a layer of j -type silicon sandwiched between two w-type layers was constructed by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at the Bell Laboratories. This device, called the transistor, has revolutionized our world (Figure 18.8). Because the transistor can control electron flow in circuits with such accuracy, yet is so small and requires so little power to operate, it is now possible to design electronic... 

Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley shared the Nobel Prize In physics in 1956 for the discovery of the transistor. The importance of the transistor was recognized as soon as it was discovered. Although it was first demonstrated at the Bell Laboratories in December 1947, it wasn t announced until July 1,1948, after patent applications had been filed. John Bardeen was awarded a second Nobel Prize in physics in 1972, along with J. R. Schrieffer and Leon N. Cooper, for work on the theory of superconductivity. 

FIGURE 18.8 The transistor and its inventors, (a) The first transistor, constructed in 1947 at Bell Laboratories. Electrical contact is made at a single point and the signal is amplified as it passes through a solid semiconductor modern junction transistors amplify in a similar manner, (b) Envelope and stamp commemorating 25 years of the transistor, with portraits of its inventors, Walter Brattain, William Shockley, and John Bardeen. 

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