Discovery of the transistor Effect

          The diode valves of the early twentieth century were large enough to be inside the electronic devices and they had many other problems like high power consumption, low reliability and the requirement of good cooling arrangements etc. So the electrical engineers and physicists at that time tried for the development of some alternatives which can fill up the place of troublesome vacuum tube in case of both the detectors and amplifiers. At that time the physics of solids were also on its way to bloom. Many theories like the Fermi-Dirac equations had opened the wide scale research on the solids. In Bell labs the scientists were desperately looking for some alternative to the vacuum diodes and triodes for the communication technology. After the end of the horrible WW2 the whole world took some rest. But the scientific community who were working in the war forcefully or by the motivation of the country’s top leaders did not rest. Rather they started their original intended works at their previous work places. The scenario in the US was also not much different. After the war the economy was weak. So the industrial research was mainly focused on the economic development. Bell labs too took some leading in the development of the communication sciences. The research group in the Bell Labs found that the existing technology and the devices for better communication were not available at that time. So their main concern was to find some alternative for the existing amplifiers. The valve amplifiers were the main obstacle in the road of progress. So, they looked for some solid state devices. The findings of Russell Ohl had confirmed that the pure silicon when doped with some impurities of tri and penta-valent materials can be used as two layers of a PN junction diode. They had some foresights that, the junction phenomenon may be used for the building of a new amplifier. The group led by William Shockley was investigating these facts. Other team members were Morgan, Bardeen, Brattain, Gibney, Moore and Pearson.

          Fortune favours the brave. The auspicious day came and the science started growing at an exponential rate there after. Thanks to the genius of the three young scientists of the Bell labs. They found a new concept known as “Transistor effect”. It was for the first time discovered by Bardeen and Brattain. That is known as point contact transistor. That was mainly contributed by Brattain and Bardeen, who thought that the effects are mainly due to some surface phenomenon. But Shockley was not dormant. He too was working hard on something different, which is today known as n-p-n transistor. He gave the theory that the transistor effect was due to some bulk phenomenon. After that he worked hard on the semiconductor theories and gave a satisfactory explanation to the transistor effect. His book “Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors” is a popular book today as well. Despite these two available models of transistor there were some other problems which were barriers in the production of transistors in large scale.