awarded in 1962, was to be challenged]. In 1959 Passive approach Fairchild was out in front with an improved transis- Jean Hoerni, the developer of the planar tech- tor with fully protected junctions. Transistors made nique, came to the U.S. after receiving aPh.D. from with the planar technique were more rugged than the University of Geneva and from Cambridge Uni- the existing devices and were less vulnerable to con- versity; both doctorates were in physics. Shockley tamination. For years, so secret was the technique, had recruited Hoerni for his venture in 1955, when that entry to Fairchild's mask-making facilities was Hoerni was doing postgraduate work at Cal Tech. tougher than getting into Fort Knox. But Hoerni was among those who left to join Fair- A talented lot child, where he headed the physics department. When Bell uncorked its secrets at that 1952 sym- Before the planar process, the mesa transistor was posium, the industry got off to a hot start and has selling well, but it was fragile and vulnerable to con- yet to cool down. A quest for talented engineers and tamination. Diffusion was then the accepted method managers began and still persists. In the early years, of doping and silicon oxide was used as the mask. experience was at a premium. Technical challenge "At Fairchild," Hoerni says, "we wanted to passi- and the lure of instant success meant the prolifera- vate the transistor, but our efforts were notably un- tion of companies through spin-offs and raids. successful. Pure silicon oxide was not adequate as a In this respect, Bell Laboratories gets credit for passivating agent." supplying not only the cookbook, but many of the As it turned out, oxide exposed to diffusion of chefs. boron and phosphorus was an effective passivator. One of the head chefs was Shockley himself, who With that discovery by Hoerni, the success of the left Bell Labs to establish Shockley Laboratories. He planar process was assured. obtained financial backing from Beckman Instru- "Bell Labs," Hoerni says, "should have come up ments Inc., and his company became awholly owned with this development, but they didn't. They could subsidiary. only understand pure silicon dioxide. It was the Among the young scientists recruited by Shockley phosphorus in the oxide that was passivating the was Robert Noyce. He and several others became junction. The diffusion into the mask — which was disenchanted about policy and product direction. unavoidable—was exactly what we needed." Hoerni, Shockley wanted to devise new products that could like others, had thought it would be detrimental. be patented on their own merits. The others wanted Hoerni stayed with Fairchild until 1961 when he to make diffused silicon transistors. When the presi- and Jay Last, another Fairchild founder, left to set dent of the parent company, Arnold O. Beckman, up Amelco Semiconductor. "There was too great an sided with Shockley, eight of the pro-transistor con- accumulation of talent at Fairchild. I wanted to tingent left. They were "prodded by an investment work more on my own," Hoerni explains. firm to form a company under the terms offered by When Union Carbide decided to enter the semi- Fairchild Camera & Instrument Corp.," recalls Dave conductor business, they tapped Hoerni as their Allison, one of the original eight and now vice presi- expert; he signed on with them as aconsultant under dent of advanced development for Signetics. Shortly athree-year contract. At its expiration he acted as a after the group formed Fairchild Semiconductor, consultant for Hughes Aircraft, then formed his own Noyce joined it. Ed Baldwin was lured from the company, Intersil, last July, to make mos and bipolar Hughes Semiconductor division to manage the Fair- integrated circuits. child operation, and he brought six of his men with Not only the men, but some of the companies seem him. Baldwin stayed but ayear, then took eight men as mobile as the electrons that are at the root of it with him to form Rheem Semiconductor. Noyce fell all. Shockley Laboratories, for example, was sold by heir to the Fairchild managership. Beckman to Clevite, then by Clevite to rrr. Of his At the outset, Fairchild convinced the Interna- personal role, Shockley views his split with the Fair- tional Business Machines Corp. that it could do a child group as distressing — "not a successful out- good job for them, and its first transistors were made come of abusiness venture." He is no longer affiliated to IBM specifications. The first one marketed by with Shockley Laboratories and never had awritten Fairchild was the 2N696 mesa — a double diffused agreement with rrr. silicon core driver. The Texas story Recalls Allison: "At Fairchild everything worked very smoothly and it was very exciting. Everything In 1951, a Dallas-based company, Geophysical was also quite profitable. Every day it seemed as if Service Inc., launched itself on the road to becoming something new was being developed. the leader in semiconductor sales. It did so by pay- "When we made the first pnp there was aproblem ing Western Electric a$25,000 advance on royalties with the base contact, but problems, as always at to become a licensee. Less than two years later the Fairchild then, seemed to solve themselves without firm, whose name had been changed to Texas In- any effort from us. struments Incorporated, had set up its semiconduc- "We went into aperiod of rapid expansion and in tor-components division under Mark Shepherd, an a few years we were up to hundreds and then to electrical engineer who worked for General Electric thousands of employees. Then, of course, came the and Farnsworth. Ti soon hired Gordon Teal, the Bell planar process." Labs scientist who had helped invent the single-

84 Electronics; February 19, 1968