1)Receiving
the Nobel Prize – The First Report
Lady
luck always seems to come at the most unexpected of times.
That was the case when the Nobel Prize for Physics was received by Leo Esaki,
who at the time was a research fellow at the IBM Watson Research Center in
the United States.
2)A
Nobel Prize Born from a Failure Analysis
Leo
Esaki won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the tunnel diode (Esaki diode), which
was actually born from the failure analysis of a transistor for radio application.
In the mid 1950's, Sony developed a transistor with an increased concentration
of impurities (phosphorus) in germanium crystals, but faced the problem of
large quantities of defective products.
3)
The Awards Ceremony in Stockholm
The
biggest highlight for the Nobel laureate is the awards ceremony held at the
concert hall of the Nobel Prize headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.
It must be sure that both the award recipients and person presenting the award
are filled with energy and excitement.
4)
Special Edition: “Congratulations, Esaki-san!”
After
it was decided that Esaki would win the Nobel Prize, the December 1973 issue
of Electronic Materials immediately printed a special edition titled, “Congratulations,
Esaki-san!” with congratulatory words from 17 people from the Japanese semiconductor
industry.
5)
Creating a Superlattice the Night Before the Big News
The
picture above is Esaki's thank-you note for the special edition of "Electronic
Materials" to congratulate him on winning the Nobel Prize.
Written at the top, "I will be in Stockholm for the awards ceremony tomorrow,
December 8th", was done in the middle of his now extremely busy schedule.
Even so, reading the packed 5-page letter, it is possible to feel the depth
of Esaki's thoughtfulness and sincerity.
6)
The Birth Place of "Super Lattice"
Esaki,
when moved to IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in 1960, felt that he wanted,
by being away from Esaki diode research work, to do a large scale research
work only possible in USA. This thought led him to his proposal of a unique
concept of “Super Lattice” in 1970.
7)
Esaki's Outstanding Analogy
Whenever
I hear Esaki’s speech, I always think he is outstanding in his analogy.
In some round-table discussion meeting, he talked, “Japanese people often
compare with US only by the finished products, but this is not real competition.
In case of Olympic Game’s race, runners run in the same racing track, and
the time difference between first and second runners are very small by only
a few seconds.
8)
Esaki Diode is not in the mainstream (?)
My
association with Esaki has already been more than forty years. The first contact
with him was when I organized the round-table talk for newly founded "Denshi
Zairyo" magazine, between Esaki and Noboru Takagi, Director, Institute
of Space and Aeronautical Science (ISAS), the University of Tokyo in the summer
of 1968. At that time, Esaki returns to Japan from US once in every 2 years.
9)
Ingenious Idea of HEMT
The
world first device to make Esaki proposed Super Lattice for practical application
is high electron mobility transistor (HEMT). Takashi Mimura, Fujitsu Laboratory's
Senior Researcher (currently Fellow) developed it in 1979.
10)
The Pioneer of Quantum Devices
Hiroyuki
Sakaki, also known as "Sakaki of Quantum Devices" drew attention from all
over the world. It is an interesting story in how he got involved in this
research. Sasaki graduated from the Faculty of Engineering at the University
of Tokyo in 1968, but the department he learned was Electrical Engineering
Department, which was only slightly related to "electronics", and he thought
that he would like to do jobs related to power generation in the future.
11)
Betting on the Room Temperature Continuous Oscillation Laser
One
of the 2000 Nobel Prize winners in physics was Zhores I. Alferov of Russia,
for developing a semiconductor laser in 1970 that continuously oscillated
at room temperature using gallium arsenide and aluminum gallium arsenide heterostructures.
However, there was a Japanese researcher who had the same achievement at the
same timing. He was Izuo Hayashi of Bell Telephone Laboratories in the United
States.
12)
"Chance" and "Luck" in Research
Izuo
Hayashi, who was successful in developing room-temperature continuous oscillation
semiconductor lasers, returned to Japan on this occasion and became the NEC
Central Research Institute Fellow and then the head of Tsukuba Research Center
of Optical Technology Research and Development.
13)
Junichi Nishizawa and his "Semiconductor Maser" Patent
In
early July, 1970 I heard for the first time of Bell Laboratory group's achievement
regarding room temperature continuous oscillation semiconductor lasers.
I suddenly heard the telephone ring, so when I picked it up, Professor Junichi
Nishizawa of the Tohoku University Electrical Communication Institute told
me of Hayashi's success.
14)
“Mister Semiconductor” becomes a Medal
In
early July, 1970 I heard for the first time of Bell Laboratory group's achievement
regarding room temperature continuous oscillation semiconductor lasers.
I suddenly heard the telephone ring, so when I picked it up, Professor Junichi
Nishizawa of the Tohoku University Electrical Communication Institute told
me of Hayashi's success.
15)
A Research Life Fascinated by Blue Light Patent
In
light of the "blue era" in which Picasso expressed human suffering in blue,
light emitting diodes (LEDs) are also in the middle of it.
It was Isamu Akasaki who is a professor at Meijo University and also a special
professor at Nagoya University who first opened the door leading the way to
blue LED era.
16)
Pioneering the Industrialization of Blue LED becomes a Medal
Akasaki
being the pioneer of blue LED "research", then it is Nichia Corporation
that put a leading pillar in its "industrialization". The company
is a major domestic company of phosphor materials with the headquarter in
Anan City, Tokushima Prefecture, and because it was involved in the purification
of metallic gallium, it was suitable for tackling on research on gallium nitride
semiconductors.
17) Announcement of CCD without Pre-notice
Charge-coupled
devices (CCD), which are widely used today as image sensors of digital cameras,
appeared suddenly. Willard Boyle of US Bell Telephone Laboratories announced
his research result without pre-notice in the panel discussion of “Which way
ICs will move in 1970s” hosted by IEEE in March 1970.
18) Character “S” imaged by 64-pixel CCD
Kazuo
Iwama, President of Sony America at that time, promptly obtained the information
of “CCD”, a new semiconductor device developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories.
He visited Bell Telephone Laboratories at the end of 1969, and talked with
Willard Boyle, one of the inventors of CCD.
19) 250K-pixel CCD attached to the Gravestone
In
1973, Sony selected CCD as one of the five big R&D projects, and started
the development, targeting at a small CCD camera. Iwama commanded, “Develop
a small CCD camera at the cost of under 50,000 yen within five years”. He
also inspired the development team by saying, “The competitor is not an electronics
manufacture, but Eastman Kodak”.
20)
Initiator of the boom of amorphous semiconductors
In
early spring 1969, I received phone call from the person called Stanford Ovshinsky.
I intuitively realized that he is Ovshinsky who is well known in the research
work of amorphous materials. He presented the paper titled “The reversible
switching phenomenon in disordered structure” in the Journal of American Physical
Society published in November 1968. It caused several arguments how to evaluate
this paper.
21)
Use of amorphous semiconductors to the solar cell
With
regards to the domestic technologies of amorphous semiconductors, Sanyo Electric’s
amorphous silicon solar cell attracted the interest. The central person of
the solar cell development was Yukinori Kuwano, actively worked in the research
department and finally became the President of Sanyo Electric.
Part-3 END
| To page top |