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The Lost History of the Transistor SEMICONDUCTORS +THE LOST HISTORY OF THE How,TRANSISTOR 50 years ago,Texas Instruments and Bell Labs pushed electronics into the silicon age BY MICHAEL RIORDAN 44 IEEE Spectrum | May 2004 | NA he speaker’s words were at once laconic and electrifying. Teal replied, pulling several out of his pocket to the general amaze- “Contrary to what my colleagues have told you about the ment and envy of the crowd. Then, in a bit of quaint but effec- T bleak prospects for silicon transistors,” he proclaimed in tive razzle-dazzle, he cranked up a record player, which began his matter-of-fact voice, “I happen to have a few of them here blaring out the swinging sounds of Artie Shaw’s big-band hit, in my pocket.” “Summit Ridge Drive.” Amplified by germanium transistors, the Silicon transistors? Did he say silicon transistors? music died out instantly as Teal dunked one into a beaker of Yes—among the few in the world at that moment. It was hot oil. But when he repeated his demonstration immersing a sil- 10 May 1954. icon transistor instead, the music played on without faltering. A long and till-then uneventful session on silicon devices had As his talk ended, Teal mentioned that copies of his paper on been winding down at the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) the subject, innocuously titled “Some Recent Developments in National Conference on Airborne Electronics, in Dayton, Ohio. Silicon and Germanium Materials and Devices,” were available There, a parade of engineers and scientists were lamenting the near the rear door. A crowd stampeded back to get them, leaving sobering challenges of developing and eventually manufactur- the final speaker of the session without an audience. Minutes later, ing silicon transistors. Amid the torpor, scattered attendees were a Raytheon engineer was overheard in the lobby shouting into a stifling yawns, glancing at watches, and nodding off. But that was telephone: “They’ve got the silicon transistor down in Texas!” before Gordon Teal of Texas Instruments Inc. made his surpris- ing announcement—and jaws dropped in disbelief. IN THE BEGINNING: Gordon Teal [left] directed the development of the silicon transistor at “Did you say you have silicon transistors in production?” Texas Instruments. William Shockley [middle] led the team at Bell Telephone Laboratories that asked a stupefied listener about 10 rows back in the audience, developed the very first transistor, which was made of germanium. TI’s silicon device with its three long leads became famous, making the Texas upstart the sole supplier of silicon transistors which now began to perk up noticeably. for several years in the 1950s. Morris Tanenbaum [right] at Bell Labs actually made the first “Yes, we have three types of silicon transistors in production,” silicon transistor, but he felt “it didn’t look attractive” from a manufacturing point of view. May 2004 | IEEE Spectrum | NA 45 At the time, the silicon transistor seemed to be one of the first February 1951, publishing the results a year later. He added specific major breakthroughs in transistor development not to occur at Bell impurity atoms to the molten silicon to alter the electrical prop- Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., where physicists John erties of crystals drawn from it. Elements from the fifth column Bardeen and Walter Brattain had invented the transistor in December of the periodic table—arsenic or antimony, for example—create an 1947. Their device featured two closely spaced metal points jabbed excess of electrons in the tetrahedral crystal structure, yielding delicately into a germanium surface—hence its name, the “point- n-type silicon. Elements from the third column, such as boron or contact” transistor. They called one point the “emitter” and the other gallium, create a deficit of electrons (usually regarded as an excess point the “collector,” while a third contact, known as the “base,” of holes), yielding p-type silicon. By adding first one kind of impu- was applied to the back side of the germanium sliver. A positive elec- rity and then the other to the molten silicon from which they slowly trical bias on the emitter enhanced the conductivity of the germa- withdrew the crystal, Teal and Buehler formed transition regions nium just beneath the collector point, amplifying the output current called pn junctions between the two types of silicon. Small bars cut that flowed to it from the base. across these junctions act as diodes when Bell Labs achieved a long string of firsts a potential is applied across them through in the years following that momentous electrical contacts on the two ends. invention, which it announced six months Meanwhile, Calvin Fuller was beginning later at a 30 June 1948 press conference in “They’ve got experiments in an adjacent lab on diffus- New York City. Among its major advances ing impurity atoms from hot gases into the was the so-called junction transistor, first the silicon germanium or silicon surface—one of the conceived the previous January by William major technology milestones on the road to Shockley, who led the group that included transistor the integrated circuit. By December 1953 Bardeen and Brattain. He figured that much Fuller was so successful that Shockley better transistor performance and reliabil- down in Texas!” started building a new research team to ity could be realized by eliminating the frag- attempt to fabricate silicon transistors using ile point contacts and instead forming the the technique. And early in 1954, Fuller and emitter, base, and collector as a single semi- Gerald Pearson formed pn junctions by dif- conductor sandwich with three different layers [see sidebar, fusing a thin layer of boron atoms into a wafer of n-type silicon, mak- “Transistors 101: The Junction Transistor”]. Current flowing from ing a hole-rich p-layer on its surface. These large-area diodes gen- emitter to collector in Shockley’s device could be modulated by an erated substantial current when sunlight fell on them. On 25 April, input signal on the base. Bell Labs trumpeted this achievement as the “solar battery,” the Teal (then working at Bell Labs) and his fellow physical chemist first photovoltaic cell operating at efficiencies near 10 percent. Morgan Sparks successfully fabricated the first working junc- tion transistor from a germanium crystal in April 1950. But—partly + + + because the frequency response of early junction transistors was inferior to that of point-contact devices—Bell Labs held off By then TI had made its first silicon transistor—under Teal’s announcing this achievement for over a year, until 4 July 1951. Five general direction. Back at Bell Labs, he had become homesick for his years later, Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley shared the Nobel Prize native Texas, where he had grown up a devout Baptist in South Dallas for inventing this revolutionary solid-state amplifier. and pursued his undergraduate studies in mathematics and chem- Their brilliant pioneering work has overshadowed much of the istry at Baylor University, in Waco. Restless in Murray Hill, N.J., and subsequent development years of the transistor, including the looking for more responsibility, Teal responded to an ad in The crucial change from germanium to silicon in the mid-1950s. That New York Times for a research director at TI. He met with TI vice shift in semiconductor material proved essential to the device’s president Pat Haggerty, who offered him the position. He began there glorious future as the fundamental building block of virtually all on 1 January 1953, bringing with him his vast expertise in growing of today’s integrated circuits. For germanium, to put it simply, was and doping semiconductor crystals. just not up to the task. Under Haggerty’s leadership, TI was moving aggressively into The material does have advantages: it is far less reactive than military electronics, then burgeoning with the Cold War in full silicon and much easier to work with because of its lower melting swing. The Dallas company had been founded during the 1930s as temperature. And current carriers—electrons and holes—flow through Geophysical Services Inc., developing and producing reflection germanium more rapidly than through silicon, which leads to higher seismographs for the oil industry. During World War II, it snagged frequency response. But germanium also has serious limitations. For a U.S. Navy contract to supply airborne submarine-detection example, it has a low band gap (0.67 electron volts versus 1.12 eV for equipment; afterward it continued to expand its activities in mil- silicon), the energy required to knock electrons out of atoms into the itary electronics, reorganizing itself as Texas Instruments Inc. in conduction band. So transistors made of this silvery element have 1951. By the time Teal arrived, the firm had almost 1800 employ- much higher leakage currents: as the temperature increases, their del- ees and was generating about US $25 million in annual sales. icately balanced junctions become literally drowned in a swarming The company was also beginning to manufacture what were called sea of free electrons. Above about 75 °C, germanium transistors quit grown-junction germanium transistors under the direction of engi- working altogether. These limitations proved bothersome to radio neer Mark Shepherd. He had attended a 1951 Bell Labs symposium on manufacturers and especially the armed services, which needed sta- transistor technology with Haggerty, where he listened to a Teal work- ble, reliable equipment that would perform in extreme conditions. shop on growing semiconductor crystals. In early 1952, after much Nowhere were these concerns appreciated more than at Bell Labs, wheedling and cajoling by Haggerty, TI purchased a patent license which led the way into silicon semiconductor research during the to produce transistors from Western Electric Co., AT&T’s manu- early 1950s.
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