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TRANSISTOR
How, 50 years ago,Texas Instruments and Bell Labs pushed
electronics into the silicon age BY MICHAEL RIORDAN
44 IEEE Spectrum | May 2004 | NA
he speakers words were at once laconic and electrifying. Teal replied, pulling several out of his pocket to the general amaze-
PREVIOUS SPREAD: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS (TEAL, SHEPHERD, AND TRANSISTOR); MORRIS TANENBAUM
just not up to the task. Under Haggertys 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 carrierselectrons and holesflow 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&Ts manu-
early 1950s. Working in its chemical physics department with tech- facturing arm, for $25 000. By the end of that year, it was already man-
nician Ernie Buehler, Teal grew single crystals of silicon and doped ufacturing and selling them under Shepherds leadership.
them with tiny impurities to make solid-state diodes in Early the next year, Teal was back in Dallas organizing TIs
TRANSISTOR FIRSTS: Bell Labs junction transistor, of germanium, was fabricated in 1950 [left]. Texas Instruments commercial silicon transistor came four years later.
layers, just micrometers thick, and hence transistors that work at to its foresight and aggressiveness, TI had the silicon transistor mar-
higher frequencies. In July 1954 Charles Lee made a successful ger- ket essentially to itself for the next few yearsand started down the
manium transistor at Bell Labs using diffusion techniques, oper- road to becoming the international giant we know today.