Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the primary lab of the Shockley Transistor Company, was the first company to work on silicon semiconductor devices in what came to be known as Silicon Valley. It was purchased by Clevite in 1960, and officially closed shortly after being sold to ITT in 1968.
In 1956 William Shockley opened Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory as a division of Beckman Instruments in Mountain View. His initial plan was to develop silicon transistors, in a time when almost all transistors were made of germanium. Texas Instruments had recently (1954) introduced silicon transistors, and Shockley thought he could do one better. He assembled a team of young scientists and engineers and set about designing a new type of crystal-growth system that could produce single-crystal silicon boules, at that time a difficult prospect given silicon's high melting point.
While work on the transistors continued, Shockley hit upon the idea of using a four-layer device (transistors are three) that would have the novel quality of locking into the "on" or "off" state with no further control inputs. Similar circuits required several transistors, typically three, so for large switching networks the new diodes would greatly reduce complexity.[1][2]
Shockley became convinced that the new device would be just as important as the transistor, and kept the entire project secret, even within the company. This led to increasingly paranoid behavior; in one famed incident he was convinced that a secretary's cut finger was a plot and ordered lie detector tests on everyone in the company. This was combined with Shockley's vacillating management of the projects; some times he felt that getting the basic transistors into immediate production was paramount, but would then turn around and de-emphasize the project in order to make the "perfect" production system. This upset many of the employees, and mini-rebellions became commonplace.[3]
Eventually a group of the youngest employees went over Shockley's head to Arnold Beckman, who was funding development at Shockley Semiconductor, but this backfired and the group left the company. Shockley denoted them the "Traitorous Eight". The eight men were Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Sheldon Roberts. Looking for funding on their own project, they turned to Sherman Fairchild's Fairchild Camera and Instrument, an Eastern U.S. company with considerable military contracts. In 1957, Fairchild Semiconductor was started with plans on making silicon transistors – the market Shockley had decided to .
Shockley never managed to make the four-layer diode a commercial success, in spite of eventually working out the technical details and entering production in the 1960s. The introduction of integrated circuits allowed the multiple transistors needed to produce a switch to be placed on a single "chip", thereby nullifying the parts-count advantage of Shockley's design. However, the company did have a number of other successful projects, including the first strong theoretical study of solar cells, developing the seminal Shockley-Queisser limit that places an upper limit of 30% efficiency on basic silicon solar cells.
Notes
- ^ Kurt Hubner, "The Four-Layer Diode in the Cradle of Silicon Valley", Electrochemical Society Proceedings, Volume 98-1
- ^ "Historic Transistor Photo Gallery Photo Essay – Shockley 4 Layer Diodes"
- ^ "Interview with Gordon E. Moore", 3 March 1995
See also
External links
- A modern website (shockleytransistor.com) carries on the Shockley name to remember the laboratory and those who first processed silicon in Silicon Valley.
- Interview with Adolf Goetzberger, a Shockley alumnus hired after mass resignations from Shockley Semiconductor
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