nusip@maccs.McMaster.CA (Mike Borza) (01/31/89)
Further to my comment about early investigations into field-effect transistors, S.M. Sze [1] states the following in his introduction to Ch. 8, "MOSFET": ..."The principle of the surface field-effect transistor was first proposed in the early 1930s by Lilienfeld [2(my ref., not Sze's--mb)] and Heil [3]. It was subsequently studied by Shockley and Pearson [4] in the late 1940s."... I have not read [2], [3], or [4] above, but remember reading a description of [2] in some long-forgotten reference. While the details are very sketchy, I seem to remember that the substrate material was a metal-oxide. (As you can see, I was off by quite a few years in my recall of the time-frame.) Any other takers? References: [1] S.M. Sze, _Physics_of_Semiconductor_Devices_, 2nd ed. (now at least one edition out of date), Wiley, 1981. [2] J.E. Lilienfeld, U.S. Patent 1 745 175, 1930. [3] O. Heil, British Patent 439 457, 1935. [4] W. Shockley and G.L. Pearson, "Modulation of Conductance of Thin Films of Semiconductors by Surface Charges", _Phys._Rev._, Vol 74, 1948. enjoy, mike borza <nusip@maccs.uucp or antel!mike@maccs.uucp>