A Brief History on Silicon Chips

Most silicon chips are smaller than the nail on your little finger, yet they are the hidden 'brains' discovered inside almost every electronic device. These tiny slithers of material are proving to be a bigger influence on modern life than the steam engine during the industrial revolution.

Silicon chips are utilized for a wide range of applications. They guide satellites into orbit close to the Earth. They control signals and monitor train movements around railway networks. They record and control the flow of cash between banks, shops and building societies. They can even wake us up in the morning with a fresh pot of coffee. This revolution in electronic wizardry began in 1948 in the Bell Telephone Laboratories, USA. Here research scientists produced the first semiconductor transistor - a pea-sized component created by adding (implanting) impurities into different sections of a pure silicon crystal.

The new transistors carried out the same function as old-fashioned thermionic valves - they amplified or strengthened electric signals fed into them - but they took up far less space and used much less energy. Semiconductor transistors soon started to replace thermionic valves in all sorts of electronic equipment, from radio sets to computers. At first, transistors had been used as individual elements on printed circuit boards (PCBs). Nevertheless, in 1958, Texas Instruments developed a technique of making separate elements on a single crystal of silicon. Transistors, resistors and many other elements were made by adding impurities into various sections of the crystal. These new electrical circuits were called integrated circuits (ICs), and also the wafer of silicon on which they were formed became known as a silicon chip.

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