![]() ![]() These two ideas, Hoerni’s planar process and Noyce’s IC concept, lit Fairchild’s fuse. With that flash of insight, Noyce changed the electronics industry forever and transformed soldering and wiring into a high-tech printing process. He realized that the silicon dioxide layer was a perfect insulator and allowed metal interconnect to be deposited on top to complete the connections among multiple devices on the IC. He’d been spurred to think of ways to use Hoerni’s planar process to make more than discrete transistors. That was the day that Fairchild Semiconductor’s founder Robert Noyce wrote down the ideas for a monolithic integrated circuit in his lab notebook. The second important step towards the semiconductor breakthrough that was needed to allow MOSFETs to achieve their destiny occurred on January 23, 1959. With few changes, Hoerni filed for a patent on the planar process on January 14, 1959. Bell Labs thought this oxide was too dirty to leave in place but Hoerni realized that a sufficiently clean insulating layer would prevent contamination from dust, dirt, and water. His innovation was to leave the thermally grown silicon dioxide on the semiconductor wafer after diffusion to protect the circuitry beneath. Hoerni needed just two pages in his lab notebook to describe the planar process. He knew about work on silicon dioxide passivation, photolithography, and etching taking place at Bell Labs because Shockley had discussed it with his research team earlier that year, before the Traitorous Eight’s departure. On December 1, 1957, just two months after Fairchild’s founding, Hoerni was hit with a flash of inspiration. The first important step towards achieving Fairchild’s destiny was the invention of the planar semiconductor process. Fairchild Semiconductor would quickly become the most important semiconductor company in the world and the company most likely to elevate the MOS transistor to its full potential. That core group cut a deal with Sherman Fairchild and founded Fairchild Semiconductor on October 1, 1957. ![]() It wasn’t, and eight members of Shockley’s research team – which became known as the Traitorous Eight – left in September 1957. The research team’s demand was for the “Shockley Problem” to be solved. Shockley’s autocratic management style and ego fractured his team, causing a showdown on May 29, 1957. However, it was not the device he’d promised to his researchers, and they weren’t pleased. Around that time, Shockley became intensely interested in the 4-layer diode, a semiconductor switch that would have been of huge interest to the Bell System. The following year, Shockley shared the Nobel prize in physics with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain for the invention of the point-contact transistor. He also promised that they’d be developing the Holy Grail du jour, the silicon transistor. He was forced to look elsewhere, and he managed to assemble a superlative team of young and freshly graduated scientists and engineers, luring them to California’s superlative weather. Initially, Shockley thought he could raid Bell Labs for personnel, but no one at his former employer wanted to work with him. He moved back to California, took a position at Caltech, cut a deal with Caltech professor and high-tech entrepreneur Arnold Beckman, and started Shockley Transistor Laboratory in 1955. William Shockley left Bell Labs in 1953 because he felt passed over for promotions and recognition. ![]() As a result, the company watched its early lead in ICs – bipolar ICs – evaporate as Moore’s Law drove IC device densities beyond the reach of bipolar transistor technology and into the enticing MOSFET domain. Like the two keys needed to open a safety deposit box in a bank vault, the planar semiconductor process technology and the planar IC were the two keys needed to unlock the MOSFET’s full potential.įairchild possessed these keys, and although Fairchild researchers contributed significantly to the development and improvement of the MOSFET, the company failed to create a successful MOS IC product line. Founded in 1957 to work on silicon transistors, Jean Hoerni developed the planar process and Robert Noyce developed the ideas for the first practical integrated circuit (IC) based on Hoerni’s planar process just months before Atalla and Kahng got the first MOSFET to work at Bell Labs. No company was better equipped and better positioned to capitalize on the development of the first MOSFET than Fairchild Semiconductor. ![]()
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