A Transistor Is A Semiconductor Device Used To Amplify or Switch Electronic Signals and Electrical Power

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals and electrical
power. It is composed of semiconductor material usually with at least three terminals for
connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's
terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output)
power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Today,
some transistors are packaged individually, but many more are found embedded in integrated
circuits.
Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed the concept of a field-effect

transistor in 1926, but it was not possible to actually construct a working device at that time.[1]
The first working device to be built was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by American
physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain while working under William Shockley at Bell
Labs. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their achievement.[2] The most widely
used transistor is the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known
as the MOS transistor, which was invented by Egyptian engineer Mohamed Atalla with Korean
engineer Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. The MOSFET was the first truly compact transistor
that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of used.
Transistors revolutionized the field of electronics, and paved the way for smaller and cheaper
radios, calculators, and computers, among other things. The first transistor and the MOSFET are
on the list of IEEE milestones in electronics. The MOSFET is the fundamental building block of
modern electronic devices, and is ubiquitous in modern electronic systems. An estimated total of
13 sextillion MOSFETs have been manufactured between 1960 and 2018 (at least 99.9% of all
transistors), making the MOSFET the most widely manufactured device in history.[10]
Most transistors are made from very pure silicon, and some from germanium, but certain other
semiconductor materials can also be used. A transistor may have only one kind of charge carrier,
in a field-effect transistor, or may have two kinds of charge carriers in bipolar junction transistor
devices. Compared with the vacuum tube, transistors are generally smaller, and require less
power to operate. Certain vacuum tubes have advantages over transistors at very high operating
frequencies or high operating voltages. Many types of transistors are made to standardized
specifications by multiple manufacturers.
From November 17, 1947, to December 23, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T's
Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, performed experiments and observed that when two gold
point contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium, a signal was produced with the output
power greater than the input.[20] Solid State Physics Group leader William Shockley saw the
potential in this, and over the next few months worked to greatly expand the knowledge of
semiconductors. The term transistor was coined by John R. Pierce as a contraction of the term
transresistance.[21][22][23] According to Lillian Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch, authors of a
biography of John Bardeen, Shockley had proposed that Bell Labs' first patent for a transistor
should be based on the field-effect and that he be named as the inventor. Having unearthed
Lilienfeld's patents that went into obscurity years earlier, lawyers at Bell Labs advised against
Shockley's proposal because the idea of a field-effect transistor that used an electric field as a
"grid" was not new. Instead, what Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley invented in 1947 was the first
point-contact transistor.[18] In acknowledgement of this accomplishment, Shockley, Bardeen, and
Brattain were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on
semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".
Shockley's research team initially attempted to build a field-effect transistor (FET), by trying to
modulate the conductivity of a semiconductor, but was unsuccessful, mainly due to problems
with the surface states, the dangling bond, and the germanium and copper compoundas materials.
In the course of trying to understand the mysterious reasons behind their failure to build a
working FET, this led them to instead inventing the bipolar point-contact and junction
transistors.

A Transistor Is A Semiconductor Device Used To Amplify or Switch Electronic Signals and Electrical Power

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A Transistor Is A Semiconductor Device Used To Amplify or Switch Electronic Signals and Electrical Power

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A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals and electrical

Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed the concept of a field-effect

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