The beginning of tunnel diode technology development Leo Esaki’s technology article in 1958


Just as the transistor has revolutionary radio and TV, electronic computers, etc., a new device even more remarkable than the transistor, which was announced in the Physical Review in January 1958, gives promise of revolutionizing the transistor.


The article was written by a young Japanese inventor named Leo Esaki, who described the making of simple semiconductor crystals much more cheaply, much more simply, and considerably more efficiently.

He called this device a tunnel diode, and it is just about as small as a transistor, with the semiconductor crystals only a few thousandths of an inch in diameter. The device is so small it will fit inside of a paper clip. The tunnel diode, according to the inventor, is enormously saving in power. It only requires 1/100,000 the energy of a vacuum tube and needs no batteries.
Moreover, the crystal does not need to be simon-pure. Whereas the transistor and the vacuum tube do occasionally produce static, the tiny tunnel diode does away with static completely.

There is little doubt that when this amazing Japanese device is produced in the quantities that the transistor is now produced, you will see wrist-watch telephones, radio, and TV sets, two-way radios for all cars, actual motion at the eraser and a lead pencil, and scores of medical and dental instrument which are now undreamed of.

The theory of the transistor and the tunnel diode has to do entirely with semisolids and semiconductors and necessitates a study of crystallography for its understanding. It is one of the most amazing and wonderful discoveries of the twentieth century and promises to revolutionize almost all electrical devices that we have today.

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The beginning of tunnel diode technology development Leo Esaki’s technology article in 1958 The beginning of tunnel diode technology development Leo Esaki’s technology article in 1958 Reviewed by knowledge people creators on December 02, 2019 Rating: 5
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