Technology is an important part of modern life

Technology is an important part of modern life. The basic knowledge of key engineering innovations in the 20th century leads people into the 21st century. From Hoover Dam and jet plane to transistor, microchip, computer and Internet, these innovations are very peculiar.

1. The dam built during Roosevelt's New Deal controlled the flood;

2. The national highway system of the United States connects the whole United States;

3. Jet planes make travel faster;

4. Transistors and microchips originated in the private sector, and then the mass market was established with the support of the government;

5. Computer and Internet were first developed with the support of the US military, and then gradually popularized with the efforts of the private sector.

In 1950s, with the improvement of productivity, the cost of transistors gradually decreased, especially for military buyers, who needed more circuits in electronic equipment to meet the increasing performance requirements, and needed to compress the circuit volume.

More and more circuits need to be packaged in a limited space. In the late 1950s, the U.S. military started two research projects in cooperation with leading American electronics companies, but they failed miserably.

The engineers of the first project tried to miniaturize in a roundabout way, but failed to solve the problem.

The engineers of the second project tried to use the materials in an innovative way, which, despite its scientific research value, lacked engineering feasibility.

Finally, two engineers from two new companies in the electronics industry solved the problem.

In the summer of 1958, it suddenly occurred to jack kilby of Texas Instruments that transistors, like other circuit components, can be made of a single material such as silicon, instead of having to add other elements as was recognized by the industry at that time.

At the beginning of 1959, robert noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor Company in California discovered that the whole circuit could be assembled by machine without manual connection by using a new process of transistor manufacturing invented by his company.

The discovery with kilby Noyce promoted the birth of the scale microchip, and the circuit volume of this flat chip can be made smaller by machines, thus breaking the volume limit of manual assembly. Texas Instruments Company was founded in 1930s, at first as Geophysical Services Company, specializing in manufacturing oil exploration equipment.

After 1945, this company changed its focus of business. During World War II, Patrick Haag Ti, the head of avionics in the U.S. Navy, joined this company to help it compete for military electronic equipment contracts.

In 1951, the company changed its name to Texas Instruments, and a year later, Hagatti obtained a transistor manufacturing license from Bell Systems.

In 1953, Hagatti persuaded Gordon Till of Bell Telephone Laboratory to join Texas Instruments. Till had already invented a method to purify germanium, which could improve the use efficiency of germanium in transistors.

In 1954, he developed a silicon transistor in Texas Instruments Company. Silicon is more difficult to manufacture than germanium, but it has stronger reliability.

In May, 1958, jack kilby joined Texas Instruments. At this time, RCA had invited Texas Instruments to participate in the US military's micro-module project, and kilby also participated in this project.

Privately, kilby thinks that the micro-module can't solve the problem of circuit miniaturization and opposes it, but he will soon have the opportunity to think deeply about other options.

In July, 1958, most employees of Texas Instruments went on vacation, but kilby, as a new employee, had not yet got a vacation. He stayed in the company for two weeks alone. kilby said that he only kept my thoughts and imagination with me. In order to avoid taking part in the micro-module work and solve deeper problems, kilby began to redesign the basic circuit.

In the 1950s, most companies in the electronic device industry undertook military contracts, and the key to production was quality, not cost. However, kilby worked in a consumer electronic equipment company for ten years, where the manufacturing cost of products was also regarded as crucial.

After he joined Texas Instruments, he wanted to find an economical and efficient solution. kilby's new owner is a leading manufacturer of semiconductor components, so it is clear that reducing the cost of using semiconductors can benefit the company a lot.

Texas Instruments Company had invented silicon transistor at that time, and also had the manufacturing capability of germanium transistor. Knowing that kilby silicon or germanium can be used to make circuit components such as resistors and capacitors, these two materials are not optimal for other components, and electronic equipment manufacturers will choose other materials.

The deeper kilby thought about it, the more he realized that the root of the interconnection problem lies in the need to connect components made of different materials. If all components are made of the same material, this problem can be eliminated.

On July 24, 1958, kilby wrote in his laboratory notes that by manufacturing resistors, capacitors, transistors and diodes on a silicon wafer, many circuits can be extremely miniaturized. He outlined how to dope different regions of the silicon wafer with N-type or P-type materials to form different circuit elements on the chip.

This idea of using a common substrate to make circuit components was called monolithic circuit idea by him. After the rest of the company returned to work, kilby asked his supervisor Willis adcock to state his idea, and the latter approved him to continue the experiment.

In kilby's experiment, the silicon transistor was used, and the silicon resistor and capacitor were made by himself, which proved that the circuit composed of these components could work. The next step was to make the circuit on the same semiconductor material, and different areas on the surface of the material were processed into different circuit components.

At that time, the company didn't have the silicon kilby needed. He made a circuit on a germanium chip.

On September 12, 1958, kilby started the device in front of the senior manager of Texas Instruments Company, and used his circuit to turn DC into AC. A week later, he made another circuit that could be used as a switch.

After experiments in autumn and winter, he successfully made these circuits out of silicon. This achievement became the second major breakthrough in electronic technology after transistor in the middle of 20th century.

Technology is an important part of modern life. In December, 1958, kilby received a letter from Texas Instruments Company, telling him that his monthly salary would be increased from $920 to $1,010 in recognition of his satisfactory work. He was already very satisfied.

Jack kilby proved that different components of electronic circuits can be manufactured on a single piece of semiconductor material, and kilby had no time to further improve this idea because of the need to apply for a patent as soon as possible.

In the examples cited by kilby when he filed his patent application on February 6, 1959, wires were still used, although he pointed out in his statement that they could be replaced by metal wires or connecting wires, which left room for robert noyce to show his talents. Noyce developed a method of manufacturing a leadless circuit on a single semiconductor chip, and his research with kilby cleared the obstacles of circuit miniaturization.

At the end of 1957, Noyce and seven other founders of Fairchild Semiconductor won a contract from IBM, which lasted the first year of business. This contract was to manufacture silicon transistors for a new type of airborne computer of the US Air Force, which must have special performance that other companies could not achieve.

Fairy Company formed two teams. The first team, led by Gordon Moore, tried to manufacture junction transistors with P-type bases. Another team, led by Joan Helney, tried to make transistors with N-type bases.

Moore's team was the first to manufacture transistors. Fairchild Company delivered 100 transistors as required by the contract before the summer of 1958. During the execution of the contract, the founder of Fairchild Company encountered a problem that plagued all transistor manufacturers at that time.

In the production process, most of the transistors were damaged by fine particles of pollutants such as dust, and only a few of them were able to operate normally in the end. After losing the competition to manufacture new transistors, Joan Helney and her team began to think about how to solve this problem.

In 1955, Bell Telephone Laboratories discovered a new method to manufacture transistors, that is, a silicon dioxide film was laid on the semiconductor surface, and the elements to be doped were diffused through the openings in the film, thus forming N-type and P-type semiconductor regions below. The film could protect the materials from the influence of temperature rise.

At that time, the transistor manufacturers thought that silica was also a potential pollutant, which would be corroded once it was no longer needed. But it suddenly occurred to Helney that perhaps keeping this silica film could better protect the transistor and improve its performance.

Experiments show that keeping the silicon dioxide layer can improve the reliability of the transistor. Besides keeping the thin film, Helney also redesigned the transistor, integrating the emitter, base and collector on the same plane coated with silicon dioxide layer, creating a more practical device.

Using machines to connect circuits in a printing-like way, Helney named it planar process, and Fairchild Company soon began to manufacture transistors by this method. If a complete circuit can be manufactured on the surface of semiconductor materials coated with oxide layer by planar process, planar process may lead them to make more significant breakthroughs.

On January 23, 1959, Noyce believed that this process has many applications, among which one of the most valuable is to manufacture multiple devices on a piece of silicon, so as to realize the interconnection between devices in the manufacturing process, thereby reducing the size, weight and cost of each active element.

The aluminum wire laid on the silicon dioxide layer will not only affect the underlying silicon, but also realize the interconnection of circuit components on the chip through connecting wires and small openings in the layer. Using the planar process, the machine can manufacture microcircuits on the silicon chip that cannot be realized by manual assembly technology.

A team led by Jay Raster in Fairchild Company overcame the challenge of engineering and assembled a working version in 1961.

Kilby conceived a complete circuit made of a single semiconductor and demonstrated it in kind, while Noyce proposed a new interconnection method, namely planar process, which can be used to make complete circuits on a chip and interconnect them.

Combining the ideas of kilby and Noyce, a new device microchip was born. The transistor originated from a new discovery in quantum physics, which inspired researchers in Bell Telephone Laboratory to develop solid-state triodes.

Transistor is the product of combining engineering objectives, progress of semiconductor purification technology and new scientific research, while integrated circuit is purely the collision combination of different engineering ideas, the use of single material and planar technology.

In order to realize this innovative invention, kilby and Noyce must know the physics knowledge related to semiconductors, and without the help of new scientific discoveries, they can make microchips as a basic electronic component, thus solving the miniaturization problem that the discrete transistor encountered ten years after its birth.

And kilby Noyce have different personalities, which influence their innovative ways. kilby will set aside time to study quietly, and if he thinks his ideas are feasible, he will devote himself to solving problems.

Noyce, on the other hand, has been taking action, trying various methods at the same time, often letting inspiration surge out in the middle of the night. Many solutions fail because the problems they want to solve are wrong.

Although they had different starting points from kilby Noyce, they finally determined a correct goal, and then contributed to the birth of the solution. Texas Instruments Company later realized that planar process was the best way to manufacture integrated circuits, and obtained the right to use this process from Fairchild Semiconductor Company.

In February, 1959, kilby hastily drafted a patent application, which did not describe in detail how to manufacture circuits.

On July 30, 1959, Fairchild put forward a competitive proposition and described the plane craft in detail.

In April, 1961, the U.S. Patent Office granted this patent to Fairchild Semiconductor Company, which was appealed by Texas Instruments Company on the grounds that kilby had the idea of monolithic circuit earlier.

In February 1967, the United States Patent Interference Commission ruled that kilby and Texas Instruments Company won the case, and then the United States Court of Tariff and Patent Appeals upheld Fairchild Semiconductor Company's claim.

In 1970, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear the case. The two companies had agreed to grant each other patent licenses in 1966, because the value of microchips was too high at that time, and neither company wanted to rely on the pending litigation results.

The production cost of the first batch of integrated circuits is higher than that of electronic circuits made of independent components, and semiconductors are not the best materials for making some components. Resistors are more suitable to be made of Ni-Cr alloy, and capacitors usually use ceramics. Critics think that every component should be made of the best materials.

Even with oxide layer protection, there are still many defects in mass-produced integrated circuits, and integrated circuits will cause unemployment risk to circuit designers. kilby believes that what they said is basically right.

After further research, people found a way to reduce the defect rate of microchips. Unemployed engineers finally found other jobs in chip design or equipment design. The progress of circuit miniaturization and the increase of circuit density brought by microchips offset these shortcomings.

Due to the high cost of IC, it can only be solved by expanding the IC market. At first, the US Navy was not interested in IC, but the Army thought that these new chips might be a good supplement to the micro-module project, while the Air Force expressed a stronger interest.

At that time, the Air Force urgently needed a guidance computer that could fit into the front cone of the missile. The molecular electronics for this purpose had not made any progress before, and the Air Force provided Texas Instruments with some start-up funds to produce microchips.

In 1962, the company won another contract to produce integrated circuits for the guidance system of Militia II missile, which is one of the three-in-one strategies of nuclear weapon delivery system. The other two are nuclear missile submarine and long-range bomber.

At that time, when Apollo planned to send astronauts to the moon, it was necessary to greatly reduce the volume of guidance and navigation computers so that they could fit into small spaceships, and microchips met this demand.

In 1962, Charles Stark draper, director of MIT Instrument Laboratory, ordered a large number of integrated circuits from Fairchild Company to complete the Apollo airborne computer design contract of the laboratory.

NASA's order made Fairchild have enough funds to increase the production of microchips, thus lowering the price and solving the early technical problems. In the mid-1960s, the U.S. Army and Navy also began to adopt integrated circuits.

In 1967, jack kilby and a team from Texas Instruments invented a pocket calculator for hand-held devices using microchips, which promoted the rapid growth of the chip consumption market. Gordon Moore of Fairchild Semiconductor Company quickly realized its development potential.

Moore discovered in 1965 that if the miniaturization speed of integrated circuits kept since 1961, in the foreseeable future, the number of transistors per unit area of a chip was estimated to double every two years. This is the later famous Moore's Law, which has been valid for the next 40 years.

Technology is an important part of modern life, but Fairchild was not promoted because of their contributions. In 1968, robert noyce and Gordon Moore left together to set up Intel, which quickly dominated the microchip market and introduced a new chip microprocessor.