Bantval Jayant Baliga (born 28 April 1948 in Chennai) is an Indian electrical engineer best known for his work in power semiconductor devices, and particularly the invention of the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT). [1] [2]
In 1993, Baliga was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to power semiconductor devices leading to the advent of smart power technology, and in 2024, won the Finnish Millennium Technology Prize for his invention of the IGBT. [3] [4]
Baliga grew up in Jalahalli, a small village near Bangalore, India. His father, Bantwal Vittal Manjunath Baliga, was one of India's first electrical engineers in the days before independence and founding President of the Indian branch of the Institute of Radio Engineers, which later became the IEEE in India. Baliga's father played pivotal roles in the founding of Indian television and electronics industries. [1] [5] During his childhood his father inspired him a lot. Baliga remembers reading IEEE proceeding during his high school days which were brought home by his father. He graduated from high school in 1963. [6]
Jayant studied at Bishop Cotton Boys' School, Bangalore. He received his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1969, and his MS (1971) and PhD (1974) in Electrical Engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. [1]
He worked 15 years at the General Electric Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York. In the early 1980s, he invented the insulated gate bipolar transistor that combines sciences from two streams: Electronics engineering and Electrical engineering. It is a transistor switch that was immediately put into production once invented.
This has resulted in cost savings of over $15 trillion for consumers, and is forming a basis for smart grid. This device is in use in many machines and devices using electricity, from kitchen appliances, medical devices, and electric cars to the electric power grid itself.
He joined North Carolina State University in 1988 as a Full Professor. He was promoted to Distinguished University Professor in 1997. He continues to innovate in electronics, even as an emeritus professor. [7]
He has founded three companies that made products based on semiconductor technologies. [5] [8] [9]
No. | Title | Publisher | Year | ISBN |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Epitaxial Silicon Technology | Academic Press Inc | 1986 | 9780120771202 |
2 | Modern Power Devices | John Wiley & Sons | 1987 | 9780471819868 |
3 | Power Semiconductor Devices | Wadsworth Publishing Co Inc | 1995 | 9783030067656 |
4 | Silicon Carbide Power Devices | World Scientific Publishing Company | 2006 | 978-981-256-605-8 |
5 | Fundamentals of Power Semiconductor Devices | Springer | 2018 | 978-3319939872 |
6 | The IGBT Device: Physics, Design and Applications of the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor | Elsevier | 2022 | 978-0323999120 |
7 | Modern Silicon Carbide Power Devices | World Scientific Publishing Company | 2023 | 978-9811284274 |
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more in miniature form are found embedded in integrated circuits. Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics, many people consider them one of the 20th century's greatest inventions.
A semiconductor device is an electronic component that relies on the electronic properties of a semiconductor material for its function. Its conductivity lies between conductors and insulators. Semiconductor devices have replaced vacuum tubes in most applications. They conduct electric current in the solid state, rather than as free electrons across a vacuum or as free electrons and ions through an ionized gas.
An insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is a three-terminal power semiconductor device primarily forming an electronic switch. It was developed to combine high efficiency with fast switching. It consists of four alternating layers (NPNP) that are controlled by a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) gate structure.
Herbert Kroemer was a German-American physicist who, along with Zhores Alferov, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for "developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics". Kroemer was professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, having received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1952 from the University of Göttingen, Germany, with a dissertation on hot electron effects in the then-new transistor. His research into transistors was a stepping stone to the later development of mobile phone technologies.
Robert Heath Dennard was an American electrical engineer and inventor.
A power semiconductor device is a semiconductor device used as a switch or rectifier in power electronics. Such a device is also called a power device or, when used in an integrated circuit, a power IC.
A power MOSFET is a specific type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) designed to handle significant power levels. Compared to the other power semiconductor devices, such as an insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) or a thyristor, its main advantages are high switching speed and good efficiency at low voltages. It shares with the IGBT an isolated gate that makes it easy to drive. They can be subject to low gain, sometimes to a degree that the gate voltage needs to be higher than the voltage under control.
A transistor is a semiconductor device with at least three terminals for connection to an electric circuit. In the common case, the third terminal controls the flow of current between the other two terminals. This can be used for amplification, as in the case of a radio receiver, or for rapid switching, as in the case of digital circuits. The transistor replaced the vacuum-tube triode, also called a (thermionic) valve, which was much larger in size and used significantly more power to operate. The first transistor was successfully demonstrated on December 23, 1947, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Bell Labs was the research arm of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). The three individuals credited with the invention of the transistor were William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The introduction of the transistor is often considered one of the most important inventions in history.
Fujio Masuoka is a Japanese engineer, who has worked for Toshiba and Tohoku University, and is currently chief technical officer (CTO) of Unisantis Electronics. He is best known as the inventor of flash memory, including the development of both the NOR flash and NAND flash types in the 1980s. He also invented the first gate-all-around (GAA) MOSFET (GAAFET) transistor, an early non-planar 3D transistor, in 1988.
Robert William Bower was an American applied physicist. Immediately after receiving his Ph.D. from The California Institute of Technology in 1973, he worked for over 25 years in many different professions: engineer, scientist, professor at University of California, Davis, and as president and CEO of Device Concept Inc. He also served as the president of Integrated Vertical Modules, which focused on three-dimensional, high-density structures. His most notable contribution, however, is his field-effect device with insulated gates—also known as a self-aligned-gate MOSFET, or SAGFET. Bower patented this design in 1969 while working at the Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
The current injection technique is a technique developed to reduce the turn-OFF switching transient of power bipolar semiconductor devices. It was developed and published by Dr S. Eio of Staffordshire University in 2007.
Dawon Kahng was a Korean-American electrical engineer and inventor, known for his work in solid-state electronics. He is best known for inventing the MOSFET, along with his colleague Mohamed Atalla, in 1959. Kahng and Atalla developed both the PMOS and NMOS processes for MOSFET semiconductor device fabrication. The MOSFET is the most widely used type of transistor, and the basic element in most modern electronic equipment.
Mohamed M. Atalla was an Egyptian-American engineer, physicist, cryptographer, inventor and entrepreneur. He was a semiconductor pioneer who made important contributions to modern electronics. He is best known for inventing, along with his colleague Dawon Kahng, the MOSFET in 1959, which along with Atalla's earlier surface passivation processes, had a significant impact on the development of the electronics industry. He is also known as the founder of the data security company Atalla Corporation, founded in 1972. He received the Stuart Ballantine Medal and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his important contributions to semiconductor technology as well as data security.
The field-effect transistor (FET) is a type of transistor that uses an electric field to control the flow of current in a semiconductor. It comes in two types: junction FET (JFET) and metal-oxide-semiconductor FET (MOSFET). FETs have three terminals: source, gate, and drain. FETs control the flow of current by the application of a voltage to the gate, which in turn alters the conductivity between the drain and source.
Roger John Malik is a physicist, engineer and inventor.
Chen Xingbi was a Chinese electronics engineer and professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. Known for his invention of superjunction power semiconductor devices, he was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a life fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He was inducted into IEEE's ISPSD Hall of Fame in 2019.
C. Frank Wheatley Jr. was an electrical engineer responsible for a number of innovations within the semiconductor industry, including the patent of the insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT). His work within the semiconductor industry garnered him a variety of awards, including his induction into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame and election as an IEEE Fellow.
Paul Richman is an American semiconductor physicist and author.
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technological innovations for a better life. The winning innovations are globally accessible and are based upon ethically sound academic and scientific research.
And it may not be too soon to identify a few new candidates for hero status—people such as the quantum-well wizard Federico Capasso of Lucent Technologies (which includes Bell Labs) and B. Jayant Baliga, the inventor of the IGBT, who describes his transistor in this issue