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.
Related post :
The beginning of tunnel diode technology development Leo Esaki’s technology article in 1958
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December 02, 2019
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