Posts Tagged: "transistors"

Evolution of the Transistor: Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain discover foundation of modern electronics in 1947

One of the foundational elements of all electronic devices today is the transistor, a semiconductor device including three terminals which is capable of amplifying an electric current or voltage which is applied to one of the terminals and output through another terminal. It’s no understatement to say that modern electronic devices couldn’t function without a component that can process electrical signals in the manner accomplished by a transistor. Yesterday’s transistors have largely been replaced by today’s integrated circuits, which are capable of much more complex processing of electrical signals, but the discovery of the transistor was a huge turning point in the electronics industry of the mid-20th century… April 4th marks the 67th anniversary of the issue date for one of two patents for which this trio of innovators has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Evo of Tech: B. The insulated gate bipolar transistor has improved U.S. electrical efficiency by 40 percent

Sunday, November 6th marks the 26th anniversary of the first U.S. patent issued to Baliga for which he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. U.S. Patent No. 4969028, which is titled Gate Enhanced Rectifier. It claimed a gate-controlled semiconductor power device having a body of semiconductor material with regions of opposing types of conductivity forming a p-n junction, two power electrodes disposed in ohmic contact with different regions of the semiconductor material, an insulated gate electrode disposed on a surface to control the conduction of opposite type conductivity carriers in a channel to either induce an opposite conductivity or repress the channel’s conductivity. The resulting semiconductor device achieves both forward and reverse blocking capability and can be switched on and off with a low power requirement.