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Pure germanium is known to spontaneously extrude very long screw dislocations, referred to as germanium whiskers. The growth of these whiskers is one of the primary reasons for the failure of older diodes and transistors made from germanium, as, depending on what they eventually touch, they may lead to an electrical short. [40]
The machine used point-contact transistors, made in small quantities by STC and Mullard. These consisted of a single crystal of germanium with two fine wires, resembling the crystal and cat's whisker of the 1920s. These transistors had the useful property that a single transistor could possess two stable states. ...
To place germanium into the periodic table, Mendeleev suggested that it might be ekacadmium, an element he had predicted earlier. In contrast, Lothar Meyer favored an identification of germanium with ekasilicon, a different predicted element. Winkler isolated more of the pure material, and eventually obtained enough to measure some of its ...
Silicon and germanium are used here effectively because they have 4 valence electrons in their outermost shell, which gives them the ability to gain or lose electrons equally at the same time. Binary compounds , particularly between elements in groups 13 and 15, such as gallium arsenide , groups 12 and 16, groups 14 and 16, and between ...
Germanium's sensitivity to temperature also limited its usefulness. Scientists theorized that silicon would be easier to fabricate, but few investigated this possibility. Former Bell Labs scientist Gordon K. Teal was the first to develop a working silicon transistor at the nascent Texas Instruments , giving it a technological edge.
A p–n junction diode is made of a crystal of semiconductor, usually silicon, but germanium and gallium arsenide are also used. Impurities are added to it to create a region on one side that contains negative charge carriers (electrons), called an n-type semiconductor , and a region on the other side that contains positive charge carriers ...
The grown-junction transistor was the first type of bipolar junction transistor made. [1] It was invented by William Shockley at Bell Labs on June 23, 1948 [2] (patent filed June 26, 1948), six months after the first bipolar point-contact transistor. The first germanium prototypes were made in 1949. Bell Labs announced Shockley’s grown ...
The critical experiment, carried out on December 16, 1947, consisted of a block of germanium, a semiconductor, with two very closely spaced gold contacts held against it by a spring. Brattain attached a small strip of gold foil over the point of a plastic triangle—a configuration which is essentially a point-contact diode .