Historical

by Massimo Guarnieri

Trailblazers in Solid-State Electronics

H
istorians usually set the birth crystals, i.e., lead Using this system in
of electronics at 1904–1906 sulfide, which was IT IS LITTLE KNOWN 1900, Braun was able
with the invention of vacuum strengthened by point THAT THE FIRST to transmit a record
tubes, such as the thermionic diode electrodes, noting that SOLID-STATE distance of 62 km. To
(valve) by John A. Fleming, triode it changed resistance exploit his innova-
DEVICES WERE
(Audion) by Lee De Forest, and the values when current tions in the same year
cathode-beam relay by Robert von was inverted, contrary MADE MUCH with the support from
Lieben. These inventions allowed easy to Ohm’s law. This EARLIER, EVEN Siemens, he set up the
electrical rectification, amplification, was the forerunner of BEFORE firm Professor Braun’s
and switching and paved the way for a semiconductor recti- THERMIONIC TUBES Telegraphie Gesell-
number of thermionic devices, upon fiers but was not ex- WERE CONCEIVED. schaft GmbH, which
which almost 40 years of telephone, ploited until the rise developed into Gesell-
radio, radar, television, and audio tech- of wireless technologies. In 1897 he, schaft für drahtlose Telegraphie Sys-
nologies were built. then the director of the Physical tem Telefunken in 1903, but his patents
Solid-state electronics spread out Institute of Strasbourg, became inter- were not well defended and his devices
after World War II, following the inven- ested in telegraphy (initially thinking were copied by others, Marconi first
tion of the bipolar transistor by John of underwater applications) and one and foremost. He began perfecting the
Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and year later developed a radio transmis- radio receiver in 1901, substituting the
William Bradford Shockley, Jr. in 1947– sion system that, for the first time, inefficient coherer receiver with his
1948, marking the era of semiconduc- had the transmitting antenna con- galena rectifier, the so-called cat’s-
tor devices that eventually superseded nected to the circuit via two coupled whisker diode, providing headset lis-
the thermionic tubes. It is little known inductors, thus producing the imped- tening and inductive coupling. He also
that the first solid-state devices were ance matching that provided superior developed the first directional an-
made much earlier, even before thermi- transmission efficiency and selectivity. tennas. It is worth recalling another
onic tubes were conceived. outstanding achievement, the first
The first person to investigate single-axis cathode ray tube (CRT)
solid-state effects was the German indicator (Braun tube, later developed
physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850– into the oscilloscope and CRT used in
1918) (Figure 1), one of the most out- the X-ray equipment, radar, and tele-
standing scientists of his time. After vision), which he invented in 1897. He
studying at Marburg and Berlin, he did not patent the device, allowing
taught in several universities (Würz- for its free widespread use. In 1909,
burg, Marburg, Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, he and Marconi were awarded the
and Tubingen). While he was still a Nobel Prize for Physics.
student, he showed a remarkable The second remarkable scientist
aptitude for science and published to investigate solid-state effects was
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several papers. In 1874, at the age of Bengali polymath Jagadish Chandra

24 and only two years after receiving Bose (1858–1937) (Figure 2). After
his doctorate, he identified the recti- studying in London and Cambridge,
fying conduction property of galena he became a professor at Presidency
College, Kolkata, where he started
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIE.2011.943016 FIGURE 1 – Karl Ferdinand Braun research on electromagnetic waves as
Date of publication: 9 December 2011 (1850–1918). early as 1895. He began experimenting

46 IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE n DECEMBER 2011

 became popular in research. In 1921, he
radio research. That THE SELENIUM conceived the elec-
same year, Greenleaf RECTIFIER WAS THE trolytic capacitor and
Whittier Pickard (1877– FIRST SOLID-STATE perfected the technol-
1956), a radio pioneer ogy in the following
METAL DIODE
and developer of the years. Being a Jew,
loop antenna, regis- SUITABLE FOR MORE he immigrated to the
tered a patent on the GENERAL POWER United States in 1927
rectifying properties USES. to escape growing

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of pure silicon (then racial persecution.
available at a relatively poor metallurgic Here, he worked on the production of
level), and one year later, a similar capacitors. In 1929, he patented a
patent on silicon carbide (mass pro- semiconductor device capable of am-
duced since 1893) was registered by plifying signals, which in fact was the
FIGURE 2 – Jagadish Chandra Bose H.C.C. Dunwoody. A few years later, archetype of the modern field effect
(1858–1937) during his demonstration vacuum technology improvements transistors (metal-oxide-semiconduc-
at the Royal Institution, London,
made thermionic tubes increasingly tor field-effect transistor). The device,
in 1897.
efficient, and after World War I they however, passed almost unnoticed (it
were the standard for professional was reinvented in 1960 by Dawon
with microwaves of millimeter wave- devices. Nevertheless, they were still Kahng and Mohammed Atalla at Bell
length, foreseeing their advantage on expensive (about US$5 at the time) Laboratories) and had no commer-
lower frequencies. In this research, he and among radio amateurs, the lower cial development because of prob-
was the first to use galena crystals performing galena cat’s-whiskers re- lems that were both technical, as
with headset listening for detecting mained very popular. sufficient pure semiconductors were
radio signals. He later used more effi- Years later, a major advancement not yet available, and economic,
cient crystals. A patent was filed in the in solid-state electronics was achieved related to the great depression of
United States in 1901 and granted in by a third man, the Austro-Hungarian- 1929. He also performed research on
1904, the first U.S. patent granted to born American engineer Julius Edgar cryogenic equipment for X-rays and
an Indian citizen. In 1899, he an- Lilienfeld (1881–1963) (Figure 3). He registered several patents in the
nounced an iron–mercury–iron coh- graduated in Berlin and was a re- electrical and chemical fields. Many
erer with a telephone detector. In his searcher at the University of Leipzig. years later, in 1945, William B. Shock-
research, he used waveguides, horn He built the largest plant for the ley of Bell Laboratories, who was try-
antennas, dielectric lenses, various production of hydrogen used in the ing to develop a field-effect transistor
polarizers, and even semiconductors Zeppelin dirigibles and cryogenic before inventing the first bipolar
at frequencies as high as 60 GHz. How junction transistor, came up against
advanced his experiments were is tes- Lilienfeld’s patents.
tified by the remark made by Nobel Meanwhile, crystal rectifiers
recipient Sir Nevill Mott, who observed evolved into the first solid-state devi-
that he was at least 60 years ahead of ces for power electronics. In 1927,
his time and, in fact, had anticipated the copper-oxide rectifier was in-
the existence of P-type and N-type vented. Having a planar structure in-
semiconductors. Apart from electro- stead of point contacts, it was suitable
magnetic fields and wireless, his inter- for currents up to 7 A (90 mA/cm2)
ests covered physics, biology, botany, but could not stand voltages more
and archaeology, and he was also a than 6 V and consequently did not
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renowned science fiction writer. reach wide diffusion. One year later in
Bose’s research boosted the use Germany, the selenium rectifier was
of cat’s-whisker crystals as radio developed. Working at voltages of up
wave detectors, and after 1906, the to 30 V, this was the first solid-state
first rudimentary solid-state diodes metal diode suitable for more general
with point electrodes, heirs of the FIGURE 3 – Julius Edgar Lilienfeld power uses.
archetypes of Braun and Bose, (1881–1963).

DECEMBER 2011 n IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 47