Jun-ichi Nishizawa 西澤 潤一 | |
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Born | September 12, 1926 Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan |
Died | October 21, 2018 92) Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan | (aged
Nationality | ![]() |
Alma mater | Tohoku University |
Awards | IEEE Edison Medal (2000) Order of Culture |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | Tohoku University Iwate Prefectural University Tokyo Metropolitan University Sophia University |
Jun-ichi Nishizawa (西澤 潤一, Nishizawa Jun'ichi, September 12, 1926 – October 21, 2018) [1] was a Japanese engineer and inventor. He is known for his electronic inventions since the 1950s, including the PIN diode, static induction transistor, static induction thyristor, SIT/SITh. His inventions contributed to the development of internet technology and the information age. [2]
He was a professor at Sophia University. He is considered the "Father of Japanese Microelectronics".
Nishizawa was born in Sendai, Japan, on September 12, 1926. He earned a B.S. in 1948, and a Doctor of Engineering degree in 1960, from Tohoku University.
In 1953, he joined the Research Institute of Electrical Communication at Tohoku University. He became a professor there and was appointed director to two research institutes. From 1990 to 1996, Nishizawa served as the President of Tohoku University.
He became the president of Iwate Prefectural University in 1998.
In 1950, the static induction transistor was invented by Jun-ichi Nishizawa and Y. Watanabe. [3] The PIN photodiode was also invented by Nishizawa and his colleagues in 1950. [4]
In 1952, he invented the avalanche photodiode. [5] He then invented a solid-state maser in 1955. [5] This was followed by his proposal for a semiconductor optical maser in 1957, a year before Schawlow and Townes's first paper on optical masers. [5] [6] [7]
While working at Tohoku University, he proposed fiber-optic communication, the use of optical fibers for optical communication, in 1963. [8] Nishizawa other invented technologies in the 1960s that contributed to the development of optical fiber communications, such as the graded-index optical fiber as a channel for transmitting light from semiconductor lasers. [9] [10] He patented the graded-index optical fiber in 1964. [2]
In 1971, he invented the static induction thyristor. [5] [11]
Nishizawa was a Life Fellow of the IEEE. He is a Fellow of several other institutions, including the Physical Society, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Polish Academy of Sciences. Nishizawa was decorated with Order of Culture by the emperor of Japan in 1989. [12] He also received the Japan Academy Prize (1974), [12] IEEE Jack A. Morton Award (1983), [13] the Honda Prize and the Laudise Prize of the International Organization for Crystal Growth (1989). [14] IEEE conferred the Edison Medal on him in 2000, [15] and introduced the IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal in 2002. [16] He has more than a thousand patents registered under his name. [1]
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore H. Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, based on theoretical work by Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow.
A PIN diode is a diode with a wide, undoped intrinsic semiconductor region between a p-type semiconductor and an n-type semiconductor region. The p-type and n-type regions are typically heavily doped because they are used for ohmic contacts.
A photodiode is a semiconductor p–n junction device that converts light into an electrical current. The current is generated when photons are absorbed in the photodiode. Photodiodes may contain optical filters, built-in lenses, and may have large or small surface areas. Photodiodes usually have a slower response time as their surface area increases. The common, traditional solar cell used to generate electric solar power is a large area photodiode.
Arthur Leonard Schawlow was an American physicist and co-inventor of the laser with Charles Townes. His central insight, which Townes overlooked, was the use of two mirrors as the resonant cavity to take maser action from microwaves to visible wavelengths. He shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for his work using lasers to determine atomic energy levels with great precision.
The static induction thyristor is a thyristor with a buried gate structure in which the gate electrodes are placed in n-base region. Since they are normally on-state, gate electrodes must be negatively or anode biased to hold off-state. It has low noise, low distortion, high audio frequency power capability. The turn-on and turn-off times are very short, typically 0.25 microseconds.
A VMOS transistor is a type of MOSFET. VMOS is also used for describing the V-groove shape vertically cut into the substrate material. VMOS is an acronym for "vertical metal oxide semiconductor", or "V-groove MOS".
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Static induction transistor (SIT) is a high power, high frequency transistor device. It is a vertical structure device with short multichannel. Being a vertical device, the SIT structure offers advantages in obtaining higher breakdown voltages than a field-effect transistor (FET). For the SIT, it is not limited by the surface breakdown between gate and drain, and can operate at a very high current and voltage. This device is also known as a V-FET, and can be found in some of the more upmarket amplifiers from Sony back in the late 1970s and Yamaha from 1973 - 1980.
In 2002, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) added a new award to its already existing program of awards. Each year, one or more nominees are honored with a medal in the name of Jun-ichi Nishizawa, considered to be the father of Japanese microelectronics. Nishizawa was professor, director of two research institutes and the 17th president at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, and contributed important innovations in the fields of optical communications and semiconductor devices, such as laser and PIN diodes and static induction thyristors for electric power applications.
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