transistor

Experimentation on the identification and use of semiconductors began in the late 1940s. Progress in the field enabled radios during the 1960s to lose their bulky vacuum tubes (valves) and instead use transistors. It is because silicon is an excellent semiconductor that it is now commonly used in electronic (silicon) chips.

Solid-state electronic component, made of semiconductor material, with three or more electrical contacts that can regulate a current passing through it. A transistor can act as an amplifier, oscillator, photocell, or switch, and (unlike earlier thermionic valves) usually operates on a very small amount of power. Transistors commonly consist of a tiny sandwich of germanium or silicon, alternate layers having different electrical properties because they are impregnated with minute amounts of different impurities.

A crystal of pure germanium or silicon would act as an insulator (nonconductor). By introducing impurities in the form of atoms of other materials (for example, boron, arsenic, or indium) in minute amounts, the layers may be made either n-type, in which electric current is carried by negatively charged electrons, or p-type, in which the current is carried by ‘holes’, which are mobile regions of temporary electron deficiency. The arrangement of n-type and p-type materials enables current to flow from one layer to another in one direction only. Transistors have had a great impact on the electronics industry, and thousands of millions are now made each year. They perform many of the functions of the thermionic valve, but have the advantages of greater reliability, long life, compactness, and instantaneous action – no warming-up period being necessary. They are widely used in most electronic equipment, including portable radios and televisions, computers, and satellites, and are the basis of the integrated circuit (silicon chip). They were invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the USA in 1948 by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, developing the work of William Shockley.