The properties of the time-temperature coefficient of resistance, rectification, and light-sensitivity were observed starting in the early 19th century. Thomas Johann Seebeck was the first to notice an effect due to semiconductors, in 1821.
In 1833, Michael Faraday reported that the resistance of specimens of silver sulfide decreases, when they are heated.
In 1874, Karl Ferdinand Braun observed conduction and rectification in metallic sulfides, although this effect had been discovered much earlier by Peter Munck af Rosenschold (sv) writing for the Annalen der Physik und Chemie in 1835, and Arthur Schuster found that a copper oxide layer on wires has rectification properties that ceases, when the wires are cleaned.
In 1839, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel reported observation of a voltage between a solid and a liquid electrolyte, when struck by light, the photovoltaic effect.
In 1873, Willoughby Smith observed that selenium resistors exhibit decreasing resistance, when light falls on them.
In 1874, Karl Ferdinand Braun observed conduction and rectification in metallic sulfides, although this effect had been discovered much earlier by Peter Munck af Rosenschold (sv) writing for the Annalen der Physik und Chemie in 1835, and Arthur Schuster found that a copper oxide layer on wires has rectification properties that ceases, when the wires are cleaned.
Power rectifiers, using copper oxide and selenium, were developed in the 1920s and became commercially important as an alternative to vacuum tube rectifiers. The first semiconductor devices used galena, including German physicist Ferdinand Braun's crystal detector in 1874 and Bengali physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose's radio crystal detector in 1901. In the years preceding World War II, infrared detection and communications devices prompted research into lead-sulfide and lead-selenide materials.
William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day observed the photovoltaic effect in selenium in 1876. A unified explanation of these phenomena required a theory of solid-state physics, which developed greatly in the first half of the 20th Century.
In 1878 Edwin Herbert Hall demonstrated the deflection of flowing charge carriers by an applied magnetic field, the Hall effect.
This spurred the development of improved material refining techniques, culminating in modern semiconductor refineries producing materials with parts-per-trillion purity. Devices using semiconductors were at first constructed based on empirical knowledge before semiconductor theory provided a guide to the construction of more capable and reliable devices. Alexander Graham Bell used the light-sensitive property of selenium to transmit sound over a beam of light in 1880.
A working solar cell, of low efficiency, was constructed by Charles Fritts in 1883, using a metal plate coated with selenium and a thin layer of gold; the device became commercially useful in photographic light meters in the 1930s.
Thomson in 1897 prompted theories of electron-based conduction in solids.
Power rectifiers, using copper oxide and selenium, were developed in the 1920s and became commercially important as an alternative to vacuum tube rectifiers. The first semiconductor devices used galena, including German physicist Ferdinand Braun's crystal detector in 1874 and Bengali physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose's radio crystal detector in 1901. In the years preceding World War II, infrared detection and communications devices prompted research into lead-sulfide and lead-selenide materials.
The first practical application of semiconductors in electronics was the 1904 development of the cat's-whisker detector, a primitive semiconductor diode used in early radio receivers.
Point-contact microwave detector rectifiers made of lead sulfide were used by Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1904; the cat's-whisker detector using natural galena or other materials became a common device in the development of radio.
However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialised applications. ===Germanium and silicon semiconductors=== The first silicon semiconductor device was a silicon radio crystal detector, developed by American engineer Greenleaf Whittier Pickard in 1906.
Johan Koenigsberger classified solid materials like metals, insulators, and "variable conductors" in 1914 although his student Josef Weiss already introduced the term Halbleiter (a semiconductor in modern meaning) in his Ph.D.
Commercially pure materials of the 1920s containing varying proportions of trace contaminants produced differing experimental results.
Power rectifiers, using copper oxide and selenium, were developed in the 1920s and became commercially important as an alternative to vacuum tube rectifiers. The first semiconductor devices used galena, including German physicist Ferdinand Braun's crystal detector in 1874 and Bengali physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose's radio crystal detector in 1901. In the years preceding World War II, infrared detection and communications devices prompted research into lead-sulfide and lead-selenide materials.
Oleg Losev observed similar light emission in 1922, but at the time the effect had no practical use.
In 1922, Oleg Losev developed two-terminal, negative resistance amplifiers for radio, but he perished in the Siege of Leningrad after successful completion.
In 1926, Julius Edgar Lilienfeld patented a device resembling a field-effect transistor, but it was not practical.
Felix Bloch published a theory of the movement of electrons through atomic lattices in 1928.
A working solar cell, of low efficiency, was constructed by Charles Fritts in 1883, using a metal plate coated with selenium and a thin layer of gold; the device became commercially useful in photographic light meters in the 1930s.
By 1931, the band theory of conduction had been established by Alan Herries Wilson and the concept of band gaps had been developed.
By 1938, Boris Davydov had developed a theory of the copper-oxide rectifier, identifying the effect of the p–n junction and the importance of minority carriers and surface states. Agreement between theoretical predictions (based on developing quantum mechanics) and experimental results was sometimes poor.
Pohl in 1938 demonstrated a solid-state amplifier using a structure resembling the control grid of a vacuum tube; although the device displayed power gain, it had a cut-off frequency of one cycle per second, too low for any practical applications, but an effective application of the available theory.
Holden started investigating solid-state amplifiers in 1938.
In 1940, Russell Ohl discovered the p-n junction and photovoltaic effects in silicon.
The first p–n junction in silicon was observed by Russell Ohl about 1941 when a specimen was found to be light-sensitive, with a sharp boundary between p-type impurity at one end and n-type at the other.
In 1941, techniques for producing high-purity germanium and silicon crystals were developed for radar microwave detectors during World War II.
Developments in quantum physics led in turn to the invention of the transistor in 1947, the integrated circuit in 1958, and the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) in 1959. ==Properties== === Variable electrical conductivity === Semiconductors in their natural state are poor conductors because a current requires the flow of electrons, and semiconductors have their valence bands filled, preventing the entire flow of new electrons.
A slice cut from the specimen at the p–n boundary developed a voltage when exposed to light. The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs in 1947.
In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick at Bell Labs accidentally discovered that silicon dioxide (SiO2) could be grown on silicon, and they later proposed this could mask silicon surfaces during diffusion processes in 1958. In the early years of the semiconductor industry, up until the late 1950s, germanium was the dominant semiconductor material for transistors and other semiconductor devices, rather than silicon.
This prevented electricity from reliably penetrating the surface to reach the semiconducting silicon layer. A breakthrough in silicon semiconductor technology came with the work of Egyptian engineer Mohamed Atalla, who developed the process of surface passivation by thermal oxidation at Bell Labs in the late 1950s.
By the mid-1960s, Atalla's process for oxidized silicon surfaces was used to fabricate virtually all integrated circuits and silicon devices. ===MOSFET (MOS transistor)=== In the late 1950s, Mohamed Atalla utilized his surface passivation and thermal oxidation methods to develop the metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) process, which he proposed could be used to build the first working silicon field-effect transistor.
After the war, Mataré's group announced their "Transistron" amplifier only shortly after Bell Labs announced the "transistor". In 1954, physical chemist Morris Tanenbaum fabricated the first silicon junction transistor at Bell Labs.
In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick at Bell Labs accidentally discovered that silicon dioxide (SiO2) could be grown on silicon, and they later proposed this could mask silicon surfaces during diffusion processes in 1958. In the early years of the semiconductor industry, up until the late 1950s, germanium was the dominant semiconductor material for transistors and other semiconductor devices, rather than silicon.
Atalla first published his findings in Bell memos during 1957, and then demonstrated it in 1958.
Developments in quantum physics led in turn to the invention of the transistor in 1947, the integrated circuit in 1958, and the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) in 1959. ==Properties== === Variable electrical conductivity === Semiconductors in their natural state are poor conductors because a current requires the flow of electrons, and semiconductors have their valence bands filled, preventing the entire flow of new electrons.
In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick at Bell Labs accidentally discovered that silicon dioxide (SiO2) could be grown on silicon, and they later proposed this could mask silicon surfaces during diffusion processes in 1958. In the early years of the semiconductor industry, up until the late 1950s, germanium was the dominant semiconductor material for transistors and other semiconductor devices, rather than silicon.
Atalla first published his findings in Bell memos during 1957, and then demonstrated it in 1958.
Developments in quantum physics led in turn to the invention of the transistor in 1947, the integrated circuit in 1958, and the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) in 1959. ==Properties== === Variable electrical conductivity === Semiconductors in their natural state are poor conductors because a current requires the flow of electrons, and semiconductors have their valence bands filled, preventing the entire flow of new electrons.
This led to the invention of the MOSFET (MOS field-effect transistor) by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng in 1959.
The US Patent and Trademark Office calls the MOSFET a "groundbreaking invention that transformed life and culture around the world". The CMOS (complementary MOS) process was developed by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963.
The first report of a floating-gate MOSFET was made by Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze in 1967.
Torstveit (Translator), Atomic Diffusion in Semiconductor Structures, Gordon & Breach Science Pub., 1987 ==External links== Howstuffworks' semiconductor page Semiconductor Concepts at Hyperphysics Calculator for the intrinsic carrier concentration in silicon Semiconductor OneSource Hall of Fame, Glossary Principles of Semiconductor Devices by Bart Van Zeghbroeck, University of Colorado.
FinFET (fin field-effect transistor), a type of 3D multi-gate MOSFET, was developed by Digh Hisamoto and his team of researchers at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in 1989. ==See also== Deathnium Semiconductor device fabrication Semiconductor industry Semiconductor characterization techniques Transistor count ==References== ==Further reading== G.
All text is taken from Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License .
Page generated on 2021-08-05