![]() By the 1920’s inventors began to investigate the use of semiconductors for amplifying and switching signals. These point-contact diodes could change an oscillating signal to a steady signal and found wide use as detectors in crystal radio receivers. And as this blog describes, it was repeated in the development of the next great leap forward in semiconductor devices, the transistor.Įarly in the last century scientists knew how to make a two terminal diode by placing a sharp metal probe in contact with a semiconductor crystal. Merton also paraphrases Bacon’s observation that “once the right path is followed, discoveries in limitless number will arise from the growing stock of knowledge.” This pattern was readily apparent in the history of the diode. Merton, traces this understanding back to Elizabethan philosopher, statesman, and scientist Sir Francis Bacon. This article appears in the December 2022 print issue.On reading my recent blog “ Who invented the diode?” CHM senior curator Dag Spicer pointed me to a fascinating scholarly treatise, “Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science,” that describes how multiple independent discoveries of scientific phenomena are the norm rather than the exception. Who knows, maybe the transistor of 2047 will make its debut there, too. This year he’s most excited about new devices that combine computing capability with memory to speed machine learning. The mind-bending advances that emerge from that conference always get him excited about the engineering feats occurring in today’s labs and on tomorrow’s production lines. IEEE’s Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco. When I was talking to Moore a few weeks ago about this issue, he mentioned that he’s attending his favorite conference just as this issue comes out, the 68th edition of ![]() ![]() For “ The Transistor of 2047,” Moore talked to the leading lights of semiconductor engineering, many of them IEEE Fellows, to get a glimpse of a future where transistors are stacked on top of each other and are made of increasingly exotic 2D materials, even as the OG of transistor materials, germanium, is poised for a comeback in the near term. Spectrum and curated this special issue, looks at what the transistor might be like when it turns 100. The best explanation of the point-contact transistor is in Bardeen’s 1956 Nobel Prize lecture, but even that left out important details.Īnd while we’re celebrating this historic accomplishment, Senior Editor Samuel K. According to our editorial director for content development, Glenn Zorpette, the best explanation of the point-contact transistor is in Bardeen’s 1956 Nobel Prize lecture, but even that left out important details, which Zorpette explores in classic Spectrum style in “ How the First Transistor Worked” on page 24. Spectrum special issue if we didn’t tell you how the original point-contact transistor worked, something that even the inventors seemed a little fuzzy on. It is a testament to imagination and ingenuity of three generations of electronics engineers who took the (by today’s standards) mammoth point-contact transistor and shrunk it down to the point where transistors are so ubiquitous that civilization as we know it would not exist without them. In fact, each of us is surrounded by billions, if not trillions of transistors, none of which are visible to the naked eye. What amazed me most besides the fact that the very thing this issue is devoted to was here with us? I’d passed by it countless times and never noticed it, even though it is tens of billions times the size of an ordinary transistor today. This article is part of our special report on theħ5th anniversary of the invention of the transistor.
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