A semiconductor device is an electronic component that exploits the electronic properties of semiconductor material, principally silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors. Semiconductor devices have replaced vacuum tubes in most applications. They use electrical conduction in the solid state rather that the gaseous state or thermionic emission in a vacuum.
A photodiode is a semiconductor 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.
The Information Age is a historic period in the 21st century characterized by the rapid shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information technology. The onset of the Information Age can be associated with William Shockley, Walter Houser Brattain and John Bardeen, the inventors and engineers behind the first transistors, revolutionising modern technologies. With the Digital Revolution, just as the Industrial Revolution marked the onset of the Industrial Age. The definition of what "digital" means continues to change over time as new technologies, user devices, methods of interaction with other humans and devices enter the domain of research, development and market launch.
An insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is a three-terminal power semiconductor device primarily used as an electronic switch which, as it was developed, came to combine high efficiency and fast switching. It consists of four alternating layers (P-N-P-N) that are controlled by a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) gate structure without regenerative action. Although the structure of the IGBT is topologically the same as a thyristor with a 'MOS' gate, the thyristor action is completely suppressed and only the transistor action is permitted in the entire device operation range. It switches electric power in many applications: variable-frequency drives (VFDs), electric cars, trains, variable speed refrigerators, lamp ballasts, air-conditioners and even stereo systems with switching amplifiers.
An avalanche photodiode (APD) is a highly sensitive semiconductor electronic device that exploits the photoelectric effect to convert light to electricity. APDs can be thought of as photodetectors that provide a built-in first stage of gain through avalanche multiplication. From a functional standpoint, they can be regarded as the semiconductor analog of photomultipliers. By applying a high reverse bias voltage, APDs show an internal current gain effect due to impact ionization. However, some silicon APDs employ alternative doping and beveling techniques compared to traditional APDs that allow greater voltage to be applied before breakdown is reached and hence a greater operating gain. In general, the higher the reverse voltage, the higher the gain. Among the various expressions for the APD multiplication factor (M), an instructive expression is given by the formula
Nick Holonyak Jr. is an American engineer and educator. He is noted particularly for his 1962 invention of a light-emitting diode (LED) that emitted visible red light instead of infrared light; Holonyak was then working at General Electric's research laboratory in Syracuse, New York. He is a John Bardeen Endowed Chair Emeritus in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has been since leaving General Electric in 1963.
Geoffrey William Arnold Dummer, MBE (1945), C. Eng., IEE Premium Award, FIEEE, MIEE, USA Medal of Freedom with Bronze Palm was an English electronics engineer and consultant who is credited as being the first person to conceptualise and build a prototype of the integrated circuit, commonly called the microchip, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Dummer passed the first radar trainers and became a pioneer of reliability engineering at the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern in the 1940s.
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.
Federico Capasso, a prominent applied physicist, was one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University. He has co-authored over 450 papers, edited four volumes, and holds over 60 US patents.
Masayoshi Esashi is an engineer. He is a global authority of Microelectromechanical systems and serves as the professor of the Tohoku University graduate school engineering graduate course.
Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. Fiber is preferred over electrical cabling when high bandwidth, long distance, or immunity to electromagnetic interference are required.
Fujio Masuoka is a Japanese engineer, best known as the inventor of flash memory.
Chenming Calvin Hu is an electronic engineer who specializes in microelectronics. He is TSMC Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the electronic engineering and computer science department of the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. In 2009, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers described him as a “microelectronics visionary … whose seminal work on metal-oxide semiconductor MOS reliability and device modeling has had enormous impact on the continued scaling of electronic devices”.
B. Jayant Baliga 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).
Jerry Woodall is an American inventor and scientist best known for his invention of the first commercially viable heterojunction material GaAlAs for red LEDs used in automobile brake lights and traffic lights, CD and DVD players, TV remote controls and computer networks. He is a recipient of US National Medal of Technology and Innovation for "his pioneering role in the research and development of compound semiconductor materials and devices..."
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to electronics:
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.
Yasuharu Suematsu is researcher and educator in optical communication technology by invention of the Dynamic Single Mode Semiconductor Lasers for actuation and following development of large capacity and long distance optical fiber communications.
