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Milestones in Electronics

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72 views12 pages

Milestones in Electronics

Uploaded by

Greg Garcia
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Milestones in electronics

Early History
• 1874: German physicist Ferdinand Braun
discovered the rectification effect.
• In the first written description of a semiconductor
diode, Ferdinand Braun notes that current flows
freely in only one direction at the contact
between a metal point and a galena crystal.
• Braun demonstrated this semiconductor device
to an audience at Leipzig on November 14, 1876,
but it found no useful application until the advent
of radio in the early 1900s when it was used as
the signal detector in a "crystal radio" set.
Early History
• 1833: First Semiconductor Effect is Recorded
– Michael Faraday describes the "extraordinary case" of
his discovery of electrical conduction increasing with
temperature in silver sulfide crystals. This is the
opposite to that observed in copper and other metals.
• 1940: Discovery of the p-n Junction
– Russell Ohl discovers the p-n junction and
photovoltaic effects in silicon that lead to the
development of junction transistors and solar cells.
Early History
• 1940’s: Vacuum-tube era
– Vacuum tubes were used for radios television,
telephone equipment, and computers…
– but they were expensive, bulky, fragile, and
energy-hungry
ENIAC-The first digital computer
The Start of the Modern Electronics
Era

Bardeen, Shockley, and The first germanium bipolar


Brattain at Bell Labs - Brattain transistor. Roughly 50 years
and Bardeen invented the later, electronics account for
bipolar transistor in 1947. 10% (4 trillion dollars) of the
world GDP.
Discrete Electronic Circuits
• In 1954, Texas Instruments produced the first
commercial silicon transistor.

• Before the invention of the integrated circuit,


electronic equipment was composed of discrete
components such as transistors, resistors, and
capacitors. These components, often simply called
“discretes”, were manufactured separately and were
wired or soldered together onto circuit boards
The Integrated Circuit (IC)
• An IC consists of interconnected electronic
components in a single piece (“chip”) of
semiconductor material. –In 1959, Robert Noyce
–In 1958, Jack S. Kilby (Fairchild Semiconductor)
(Texas Instruments) demonstrated an IC made in
showed that it was silicon using SiO2 as the
possible to fabricate a insulator and Al for the
simple IC in germanium. metallic interconnects.

The first planar IC


(actual size: ~1.5mm diameter)
Evolution of Electronic Devices

Vacuum Discrete
Tubes Transistors

SSI and MSI VLSI


Integrated Surface-Mount
Circuits Circuits
From a Few, to Billions of Components
• By connecting a large number of components, each
performing simple operations, an IC that performs complex
tasks can be built.
• The degree of integration has increased at an exponential
pace over the past ~40 years.
– The number of devices on a chip doubles Intel Penryn® Processor
every ~2 years, for the same price.

300mm Si wafer
Electronics Milestones
1874 Ferdinand Braun invents the solid-state 1958 Integrated circuits developed by
rectifier. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce
1906 Lee DeForest invents triode vacuum 1961 First commercial IC from Fairchild
tube. Semiconductor
1907-1927
1963 IEEE formed from merger of IRE and
First radio circuits developed from AIEE
diodes and triodes.
1968 First commercial IC opamp
1926 Julius Lilienfeld field-effect device
patent filed. 1970 One transistor DRAM cell invented
by Dennard at IBM.
1947 John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at
Bell Laboratories invent bipolar 1971 4004 Intel microprocessor
transistors. introduced.
1952 Commercial bipolar transistor 1978 First commercial 1-kilobit memory.
production at Texas Instruments.
1956 Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley receive 1974 8080 microprocessor introduced.
Nobel prize. 1984 Megabit memory chip introduced.
2000 Alferov, Kilby, and Kromer share
Nobel prize
Visit www.computerhistory.org for more information
Important development that led to the electronics
technology
• Some thoughts...
– new inventions and discoveries may arise from latter inventions
and discoveries
– it is possible that what we believed to be true today– may be
proven otherwise some other time
– some inventors get rich, others do not
– patents are important
– age and health status is not a hindrance to achieve something,
even technology itself
– is the era of discoveries and inventions over?
– one can discover or invent something even if it is not his field of
specialization
– engineers play an important part in the kind of life we can have
Important development that led to the electronics
technology

• Electronics
– branch of science that deals with the study of
flow and control of electrons and the study of
their behaviour and effects in vacuums, gases, and
semiconductors, and with devices using such
electrons.

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