Transistor invention

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

The transistor invented in 1947 started a revolutionary trend in the fields of communication, information processing and automatic control. Soon after, a large and still increasing number of miniaturised transistors and solid state devices were combined to integrated electronic circuits. Such IC s were not only compact, of small size and fast but also relatively cheap. 

FIGURE 15-1 This photo shows a replica ofthefirst transistor, invented at the Bell Laboratories in 1947. 

The first transistor, invented in 1947 at the famous Bell Laboratories, fit in the palm of a hand. 

The most rigorous test a scientific model can pass is to predict the results of an experiment and then have those results confirmed in the laboratory. The first major prediction of quantum mechanics that came true was the transistor, invented in 1947 at Bell Laboratories. The small size and low power consumption of the transistor make possible the complicated electrical circuits in the personal-computer microprocessor. 

Probably the most important applieation of electronic computers in engineering is to the area of manufaeturing. Development of NC and CAD diseussed in See. 3.0 and See. 5.0 represent important breakthroughs. These had a slow start beeause the transistor invented in 1947 was not yet readily available, and the energy and spaee eonsuming vacuum diodes were still in use. 

Early reports of Si rectifiers by Hans Holhnann and Jurgen Rottgardt 1947 Transistor invented by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley... 

Practical transistors, invented in the late 1940 s and early 1950 s form the basis of current circuit technologies. 

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. 

A number of American research institutions and the people who shaped them have already featured in this book the creation of the Materials Research Laboratories Robert Mehl s influence on the Naval Research Laboratory and on Carnegie Institute of Technology Hollomon s influence on the GE laboratory Seitz s influence on the University of Illinois (and numerous other places) Carothers and Flory at the Dupont laboratory the triumvirate who invented the transistor and the atmosphere at Bell Laboratories that made this feat possible Stookey, glass-ceramics and the Corning Glass laboratory. I would like now to round off this list with an account of a most impressive laboratory that came to grief, and the man who shaped it. 

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 invention of the germanium transistor in 1947 [I, 2] marked the birth of modem microelectronics, a revolution that has profoundly influenced our current way of life. This early device was actually a bipolar transistor, a structure that is mainly used nowadays in amplifiers. However, logical circuits, and particularly microprocessors, preferentially use field-effect transistors (FETs), the concept of which was first proposed by Lilicnficld in 1930 [3], but was not used as a practical application until 1960 [4]. In a FET, the current flowing between two electrodes is controlled by the voltage applied to a third electrode. This operating mode recalls that of the vacuum triode, which was the building block of earlier radio and TV sets, and of the first electronic computers. 

Before the invention of the transistor in 1948, the electronics industry was based on vacuum... 

A rapid evolution occurred in the electronics industiy after the invention of the transistor and the monolithic integrated circuit ... 

Before the invention of the planar transistor, many photoresist processes were developed for the manufacture of circuit boards. Experience gained in this area was rapidly transferred to silicon processing, and much of the early work in integrated circuit lithography can be traced directly to circuit board manufacturing. 

Silicon s tetravalent pyramid crystalline structure, similar to tetravalent carbon, results in a great variety of compounds with many practical uses. Crystals of sihcon that have been contaminated with impurities (arsenic or boron) are used as semiconductors in the computer and electronics industries. Silicon semiconductors made possible the invention of transistors at the Bell Labs in 1947. Transistors use layers of crystals that regulate the flow of electric current. Over the past half-century, transistors have replaced the vacuum tubes in radios, TVs, and other electronic equipment that reduces both the devices size and the heat produced by the electronic devices. 

Schottky diodes is that the invention of the very fast Si CoolMOS transistor is helping the introduction of the SiC Schottky diode. The power transistors always have a freewheeling diode in antiparallel, however, there has been no diode fast enough to match these fine Si transistors until the introduction of the SiC Schottky diode. 

In terms of the electronic age, which includes the invention of the radio, television, calculator, and computer, it has been claimed that the discovery of high Tc superconductors has resulted in a "third electronics revolution" preceded by the transistor (1947), and the vacuum tube (1904). It now appears that we have shifted from "silicon valley" to a "copper-oxide valley" with the new discoveries in the field of high Tc superconductivity. 

Li et al. (2) prepared dithiophene analogues, (I) and (II), of the current invention, which were effective as thin-hlm transistors. 

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