Talk:Transistor

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

MOSFET Invention, who invented it and it's importance

I am currently reading To the Digital Age: Research Labs, Start-up Companies, and the Rise of MOS Technology by Ross Knox Bassett. Bassett is professional historian of science, so his work is as reliable as it gets. I have huge problems with the way this article and other present history of MOS transistor. First of all as Bassett show there was very little new in Attalah and Kahng invention, as Bassett puts it:

"Atalla appears to have conceived it, but it was an invention in a different sense than the transistors of Bardeen and Brattain and Shockley. The invention of both the pointcontact transistor and the junction transistor involved novel effects. The principles that Atalla’s device used were well known; veterans in the field would have recognized them as ones that had been tried without success by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley. Atalla recycled these principles using the advanced fabrication techniques that Bell Labs had developed to make diffused bipolar junction transistors. In some sense Atalla’s biggest breakthrough was an intellectual one, thinking that such a device was worth making at all"(page 24). Attalah and Kahng doe not even give this device a name, again from Bassett:

"Atalla and Kahng’s writings provide evidence that even they had ambivalence about what they had done. A name is obviously one of the first steps in the serious consideration of any kind of invention, and Atalla and Kahng’s failure to name their device implies that they saw it as stillborn. They did not even identify their device as a transistor, suggesting a reluctance to even put their work into the same family line as the work of Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley. Atalla and Kahng’s paper at the 1960 SSDRC did not establish their device as a promising subject for research or even as something recognized by the semiconductor community at large. The conference chairman made no mention of Atalla and Kahng’s work in his brief report on the technical highlights of the conference, although he did mention Bell’s epitaxial transistor. No further work on a device like Atalla and Kahng’s was presented at either the SSDRC or the Electron Device Conference over the next two years. Two articles reviewing the state of the semiconductor field in 1962 made no mention of Atalla and Kahng’s device. Their work seemed to be a dead end".

The reason MOS transistor even received attention was due two factors:first passivation of silicon surfaces by silicon dioxide gave hope the problems of semiconductor surfaces could be resolved, and second invention of integrated circuit change the way transistor are judged, making MOS simplicity attractive to some(page 13). It will take many years and many people working on it to make MOS practical. Again Basset write that, for example in IBM even in 1967 the future of MOS technology was far from clear(page 106). Contribution from people like Wanlass was just as important as Atalla and Kahng work. DMKR2005 (talk) 21:33, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

The fact that Attalah and Kahng did not name the invention is not relevant. Nor is the fact that they did not recognize its significance. Conceiving and publishing is notable. Their contribution can be in the article. As to whether they should be anointed as the inventors, it should be left to reliable sources. Right now, it looks like the reliable sources say that they are the inventors. No need to start an edit war over this. Constant314 (talk) 22:32, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

"grounded emitter, ..."

I saw the term grounded emitter used a few times. In literature I've read, the term is common emitter, common base, common collector and likewise with source, gate & drain for FETs. The term grounded is not used in some countries; it is called earthed - ground is called earth. I suggest that the term grounded should be changed to common, which is based, I believe, on network theory. Thank you. acmefixer@yahoo.com 2022-08-09. 2600:1700:CD40:C510:C569:E860:4740:249A (talk) 09:34, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

A grounded emitter circuit is a common emitter circuit, but not all common emitter circuits are grounded emitter circuits. The terms are used correctly in the article. Constant314 (talk) 11:55, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Patent numbers?

In the article, it says:

The first bipolar junction transistors were invented by Bell Labs' William Shockley, who applied for patent (2,569,347) on June 26, 1948.

However, there seems to be an earlier patent (US2524033) that describes what appears to be a similar invention, with the patent going to John Bardeen. It was applied for four months before US2569347 and was also granted first (October 3, 1950 versus September 25, 1951). So is this article pointing to the correct patent and order of events? I am fairly experienced with electronics and semiconductors, but patent language and diagrams are so difficult to read that I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what was claimed in each, and why John Bardeen applied for a patent 4 months before Shockley did for what appears to be a very similar device and design. For example, Figure 7 in Bardeen's patent appears to show a PNP stack, and he mentions that his device shows current gain, which is exactly what a transistor does.

Would appreciate some feedback or input from someone more experienced than I with reading patents and semiconductor physics (which I have only a passing understanding of). MrAureliusR_Talk! 01:10, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Both were filed by "Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc"

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bardeen#Invention_of_the_transistor
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US2524033A/en?oq=US2524033
• https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/f8/53/1c/dc0c7b5252a663/US2524033.pdf

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Development_of_the_transistor
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347A/en?oq=US2569347
• https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4c/d7/98/e30fdc30f7dc7d/US2569347.pdf

• Sbmeirow • Talk • 03:20, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Was William Shockley actually one of the threesome who invented the point contact transistor?

In the article, it says, "The first working device was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley". However, I found a different article on the website Electronic Design, authored by Lou Frenzel, that gives contradictory information. Link: https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/analog/article/21808701/who-really-did-invent-the-transistor In the article, it says that William Shockley was not included in the first point contact transistor patent. Attihoch (talk) 17:18, 7 November 2024 (UTC)