The transistor effect
Efecto transistor (amplificación en semiconductores)
- Date
- 1947 · confidence high
- Place
- Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey, United States
- Credited to
- John Bardeen; Walter Brattain; William Shockley
- People
- 👤 John Bardeen1908–1991👤 Walter Houser Brattain1902–1987👤 William Bradford Shockley1910–1989
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
On 16 December 1947 Bardeen and Brattain observe that two gold contacts on germanium amplify a signal: surface states and the injection of minority carriers allow a large current to be controlled by a small one. It is the physical discovery that founds solid-state electronics.
Shockley did not take part in the point-contact transistor experiment but invented the junction transistor; known internal tensions.
What it led to
- Junction transistor (Shockley, 1948) and the integrated circuit (1958)
- Microelectronics and computers
- Surface and semiconductor physics
- The digital age
Built on
- Germanium1886
- Pauli exclusion principle1925
- Field-effect transistor (Lilienfeld's patent)1925 (patente)
- Ohl's p-n junction
- Band theory
- Purification of germanium and silicon for radar
- Bardeen's surface-states theory