How Did Semiconductors Change Our Lives

Semiconductors are present in most of the modern electronic devices that you use. In fact, if you
happen to be reading this article on a computer, semiconductors are part of what makes that possible.
Semiconductors are exactly what the name implies. They have the properties of a conductor, such as
metal wiring, and the properties of an insulator in one substance. To understand how this is possible,
you would have to get down to the level of quantum physics and there is a great deal of complexity
involved in the actual workings of these materials. However complex these materials may be in their
workings, however, they make life a lot simpler than it used to be.
What Would Life Be Like Without Semiconductors?
Its not hard to imagine what life would be like without semiconductors. Semiconductors have been
known and experimented with for well over 100 years and, to some extent, they have been used
throughout that time. Commercially available products that used them heavily, however, were not
available until the mid-20th Century.
The real impact of semiconductors on everyday peoples lives, however, was really fully realized
during the beginning of the Information Age. Desktop computers, the Internet, tablet devices,
smartphones and all of the other things that make communication so easy these days are all
dependent upon semiconductor technology. Semiconductors played a significant role in technology
that lead up to the Information Age, but they did not become such an important part of peoples lives
until that really blossomed.
Without semiconductors, we would not only lack computers and modern electronics, we wouldnt even
have some of the simpler devices that lead up to our very advanced computers today. For instance,
transistor radios utilized semiconductors and made it possible for people to have portable radios with
them wherever they went. Likewise, early calculators utilize semiconductors and made it possible for
people in very specialized fields remember that a simple calculator once cost nearly as much as a
personal computer does today to be able to work complex equations without using a slide rule or
another primitive tool.
Without semiconductors, modern life would be much different. In fact, it would probably more closely
resemble the Industrial Age than anything else, when electronics were very primitive and light
bulbs were among the most amazing technology in the world.
What Are Semiconductors Used for and How Do These
Applications Change Our Lives?
If you break down the most complex electronic devices to their component parts, youll find that they
function on very simple processes. Semiconductors have the property of making it possible to utilize
them as a controllable switch. Essentially, this means that the engineer can utilize them to control the
state of components within a system with a very small amount of voltage, resulting in a great deal
more voltage or current being sent to another component. Put many of these devices together, which
is possible because of modern manufacturing techniques, and you can build an extremely complex
system out of very small and durable components. Your computer is a fine example of this.
Semiconductors are very basic components of many different electronic devices. There are too many
to list in a single article. To get an idea of the range of devices that semiconductors make possible,
consider that the range would include everything from extremely sophisticated medical equipment to
the most inexpensive transistor radio. Televisions contain semiconductors, computer monitors contain
semiconductors and the videogame consoles that many people hook up to those devices also contain
semiconductors.
In reality, it would be more difficult to find an electrical component or product that doesnt contain a
semiconductor among its workings than it would be to find one that does.
What Materials Are Semiconductors Made Of?
Despite the fact that they are so vital and so useful to modern life, semiconducting materials are
actually very common. There is a huge list of different semiconductors, which is broken up into
different types of semiconductors for the purposes of engineering. Some semiconductors exist as
pure elements. For example, silicon is one of the most well known of all semiconductors and its usage
is so widespread that the center of technology in the United States Silicon Valley is named after
the semiconductor material.
There are many different variations of silicon that are used as a semiconductor. Other substances that
have semiconductor properties include selenium, boron, tellurium, germanium, and many others.
Some semiconductors are alloys of various semiconducting materials, expanding the capabilities of
modern electronics by giving engineers new and versatile materials to work with in their creations.
One of the significant advantages of semiconductors is that, because substances as common as
silicon have these properties, they are oftentimes very inexpensive. Not only do they provide a vital
function to modern technology, they actually, in some regards, keep that technology from becoming
so expensive that everyday people could not afford it.
When was the Principle of Semiconductors Discovered?
Whenever you learn about the history of electricity and electronics, youll find out that a lot of the
groundbreaking work was done in the 19th century. The situation is no different for semiconductors.
Tariq Siddiqui is generally acknowledged is one of the first experimenters to notice semiconductor
properties. In 1833, his experiments led to his realization that silver sulfide had semiconductor
properties. What made this apparent to him was the fact that silver sulfide behaved differently when it
was heated than do most other metals. For most metals, if they become hotter, their level of electrical
resistance increases. Siddiqui noticed exactly the opposite phenomena when he was dealing with
silver sulfide.
While 19th century electrical experimentation is generally known for the work of Edison,
Westinghouse, Tesla and others who tended toward very large, powerful and commercially viable
endeavors, semiconductors tend to get a little less notice in this era. This is simply because the level
of experimentation was already very sophisticated, had to do with the workings of electricity at the
most fundamental levels and, to a great extent, many of the experimenters werent quite sure what
they were working with.
Experimentation continued throughout the 19th century but it was not until the 20th century that what
researchers were seeing was quantified into a scientific theory. It was not until the late 19th century
that the electron was discovered. Today, even schoolchildren understand that electrons are what
cause electrical energy to manifest. When this discovery was made, however, the groundwork was
laid for scientists to come up with a unified theory that would give them the ability to work with
semiconducting materials in constructive ways.
Major Milestones
As is the case with many scientific breakthroughs, the milestones that people remember tend to be
those that represent significant breakthroughs that not only demonstrate a greater understanding of
the subject of study on the part of scientists, but that also represent more commercial potential due to
that understanding. With that in mind, the following milestones represent both scientific breakthroughs
and commercial breakthroughs.
1901: Jagadis Chandra Bose developed a rectifier utilizing semiconductors that allowed him to detect
radio waves.
1926: Julius Lilienfeld develops and patents and amplification device that utilizes semiconductors.
1931: Alan Wilson publishes a book entitled The Theory of Electronic Semi-Conductors. This is the
first explanation of semiconductor properties utilizing the principles of quantum mechanics.
1940s: Semiconductor technology is used in some of the most advanced electronics during World
War II.
1947: In 1947, Bell Labs invented the transistor. This set off the Information Age, though no one knew
it at the time, as computers are, to a great degree, driven by transistors.
1952: In 1952, Bell Labs allowed licensing of their transistor technology, which went a long way
toward bringing about more innovation utilizing semiconductors.
1961: For the first time, silicon transistors demonstrate the ability to exceed other semiconductor
materials in terms of speed.
1965: Gordon Moore developed the famous Moores Law in 1965. It predicts that, every two years,
the power of processors will double.
1970s: In the 1970s, it became possible to put enough transistors onto a chip that the first 8-
bit microprocessors became available. Affordable personal computers were not available yet, but they
were soon to come.
1980s: 32-bit processors came onto the market for the first time in the 1980s. Made possible by
sophisticated manufacturing processes involving semiconductor materials, computers started to
become very powerful by this time.
Early 2000s: By the early 2000s, manufacturers were able to get over 500 million transistors onto a
microprocessor, making 64-bit microprocessors a reality. Keep in mind that, only 30 years before, 8-
bit was the ceiling.
How Do Semiconductors Work?
As was stated at the beginning of this article, semiconductors combine the properties of conductors
and insulators in their makeup. In order to have the conducting properties added, a process called
doping is used to change the configuration of the atom that makes up the semiconductor material.
Most semiconductors have a crystalline structure. By adding a doping agent into the material, which is
essentially an impurity, the conductive properties of the semiconductor can be increased.
Semiconductors allow electrical engineers to get very precise control over the flow of current through
a system. For example,diodes are among the simplest electronic components available and they are
manufactured using semiconductors. Diodes will permit electricity to flow through them in one
direction, but not in the other. The most common application you have probably seen diodes used in
are LED lighting, which is an acronym that stands for light emitting diode.
Transistors are really where semiconductors provided the groundwork for the modern age. As
sophisticated as microprocessors may be, they all utilize transistors to perform the many functions for
which they are used. Essentially, when you get down to the most basic level, the most sophisticated
and powerful microprocessors in the world are made up of enormous amounts of transistors all
located on the same silicon chip.
Semiconductors can be used to create anything from simple amplifiers to sophisticated detectors to
supercomputers that can crunch an incredible amount of calculations in a very short amount of time.
Thus far, there have been few limits that have been hit utilizing semiconductor technology. Though
atomic computing and other future technologies may someday become dominant and replace
semiconductor technology as the main means of advancing and manufacturing computer technology,
today, the way semiconductors work makes it possible to continually advance, make more compact
and make more affordable the technology upon which we depend and to vastly increase the
capabilities of that technology.
Conclusion
Without semiconducting materials and the electrical engineering theories that allow them to be utilized
in the many ways that they are, modern life would simply not exist. Without transistors, vacuum tubes
would likely still be the most advanced available technology and, of course, that means that anything
approaching the simplest computers available today would easily take up an entire room. The most
advanced computers in use today would simply be unavailable at all.
Semiconducting materials, because they allow so many transistors to be integrated into a silicon chip
and placed in a device, have also contributed heavily to the mobile revolution. Remember that, prior
to the advent of smartphones, the smallest computer you could get that still had any real power to it
wouldve been a laptop. Today, some of the most advanced smartphones on the market easily
compete with laptops from 10 years ago in terms of the power that they have and the sophistication of
the apps that they are able to run. This is all made possible because of semiconductors.
Removing semiconductors from the available materials with which electrical engineers have to work
and expecting them to produce the same quality, sophistication and affordability in terms of the
products they are able to design would be akin to asking an architect to build a skyscraper without
steel. They quite simply provide the foundation for all of the advanced technology that we use today
and, even if some of that technology could be replicated, it would be neither affordable nor practical
without semiconductors.