Information technology (IT) influences our lives at many levels.

We use it to collect, process,

communicate and present information. IT controls high-tech processes as well as medical diagnostic

instruments and everyday home appliances. Computers are linked in a global network and only a few

years from now, they will number one billion. The performance of microelectronic circuits seems to be

increasing one hundred-fold every ten years - at unchanged prices. IT is viewed as a prime mover in

the economic upswing our society has experienced over the past decade.

Nobel Prize in Physics rewards contributions to the early developments of microelectronics and

photonics, focusing on the integrated circuit, or "chip," as well as semiconductor heterostructures for

lasers and high-speed transistors.

The transistor was invented around Christmas 1947 and the discoverers of the transistor effect were

awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. Ten years after that discovery, transistors had replaced

vacuum tubes on a large scale. Beaches were being flooded by pop music, and one of the inventors is

said to have exclaimed: "If only I had never invented that transistor."

Discrete transistors were soldered on circuit boards together with other components. But the

emerging computers required ten thousands of transistors on the same board, a time-consuming and

error-prone task.

As a newly hired engineer, Jack Kilby did not get his two weeks of vacation in the summer of 1958.

Instead he had the privilege of thinking undisturbed on working time. He designed a circuit out of

components made from a single semiconductor material that had been processed in different ways.

This had already been suggested, but it was in conflict with the prevailing industrial practice of

producing parts in the cheapest available material. On September 12, he was able to demonstrate

that an integrated circuit worked - the birth date of the integrated circuit is one of the most important

birth dates in the history of technology. Since then, things have moved fast. Chips being made today

contain nearly a billion bits of memories or logic gates in processors - the brains of computers.

What was needed was not only more, smaller and cheaper transistors, but also faster ones. Early

transistors were relatively slow. Semiconductor heterojunctions were proposed as a way of increasing

amplification and achieving higher frequencies and power. Such a heterostructure consists of two

semiconductors whose atomic structures fit one another well, but which have different electronic

properties. A carefully worked out proposal was published in 1957 by Herbert Kroemer. Today, high-

speed transistors are found in mobile (cellular) phones and in their base stations, in satellite dishes

and links. There they are part of devices that amplify weak signals from outer space or from a

faraway mobile telephone without drowning in the noise of the receiver itself.

Semiconductor heterostructures have been at least equally important to the development of photonics

- lasers, light emitting diodes, modulators and solar panels, to mention a few examples. The

semiconductor laser is based upon the recombination of electrons and holes, emitting particles of
light, photons. If the density of these photons becomes sufficiently high, they may begin to move in

rhythm with each other and form a phase-coherent state, that is, laser light. The first semiconductor

lasers had low efficiency and could only shine in short pulses.

Herbert Kroemer and Zhores Alferov suggested in 1963 that the concentration of electrons, holes and

photons would become much higher if they were confined to a thin semiconductor layer between two

others - a double heterojunction. Despite a lack of the most advanced equipment, Alferov and his co-

workers in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) managed to produce a laser that effectively operated

continuously and that did not require troublesome cooling. This was in May 1970, a few weeks earlier

than their American competitors.

Lasers and light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been further developed in many stages. Without the

heterostructure laser, today we would not have had optical broadband links, CD players, laser

printers, bar code readers, laser pointers and numerous scientific instruments. LEDs are used in

displays of all kind, including traffic signals. Perhaps they will entirely replace light bulbs. In recent

years, it has been possible to make LEDs and lasers that cover the full visible wavelength range,

including blue light.

I have emphasized the technical consequences of these discoveries, since these are easier to explain

than the spectacular scientific breakthroughs that they have also led to. Challenging problems and

matching resources have led to large-scale basic research. The advanced materials and tools of

microelectronics are being used for studies in nanoscience and of quantum effects. Scientific

experiments and computations are, of course, highly computerized.

Semiconductor heterostructures can be regarded as laboratories of two-dimensional electron gases.

The 1985 and 1998 Nobel Prizes in physics for quantum Hall effects were based on such confined

geometries. They can be reduced further to form one-dimensional quantum channels and zero-

dimensional quantum dots for future studies.