WOODALL RL
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AB
A Brief and Biased Theological History of the
Realization of the Heterojunction
by
Jerry M. Woodall
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
UC Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA
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In the beginning . . . .
God created Shockley
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And God said unto Bill,
“Verily I say unto thee: Vacuum tubes
suck. Go ye therefore into the laboratory
and create a solid state amplifier.”
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And Bill obeyed God’s command and
spent many hours watching his subordinates
swelter in the oppressive BTL environment to
stick a few wires on a piece of germanium.
He then presented the creation to the Lord.
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And God said unto Bill,
“You gotta be kidding! How in my name
will Sony be able to get this thing into a
Walkman?”
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And so, a chastised Bill returned to the BTL
dungeons, whereupon he invented the bipolar
junction transistor. And for good measure the
patent had claims concerning the idea
of a heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT). . . .
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Shockley, Pat. # 2,569,347
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claims 11-13
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And God said unto Bill,
“Yea, the BJT is good and will help IBM
make a bundle on its main frames. But
tell me more about the HBT?”
But Bill, seeing Noyce, Grove, and Moore
getting filthy rich on BJTs, decided to
start his own company which crashed and
burned. So, Bill retired to Stanford.
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God was pleased with the BJT which was
fruitful and multiplied and directed the Nobel
Committee to reward Bill and his gang with
The Prize.
But first, to find out more about HBTs. . . .
God created Herb
and commanded him to show why God
should be interested in HBTs, Whereupon
Herb fulfilled God’s command. . . . .
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And God said,
“I get it. But how in my name are you going
make this frickin’ thing? Si emitters on a Ge
base will have defects at the interface. GaAs
on Ge will dope each other and GaAsP on
GaAs will have defects at the interface.
“But wait. There’s this out-of-the-box guy at
IBM who makes red LEDs out of AlGaAsGaAs HJs by some weird technique called
liquid phase epitaxy. I’ll get him to make us
an HBT.”
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And God said: “HBTs are good!”
Thanks, Herb for the HJ and helping me to have
a Cinderella career too.
Jerry