4) Marvelous Ideas from the Planar IC
Picture A (left): Robert Noyce, who invented the Planar IC
Picture B (right): The first commercial IC fabricated by Fairchild Semiconductor
in 1961
When the wheels of time make huge turns, perhaps by invisible
forces, people will inevitably head towards that direction.
The year after Jack Kilby announced his fundamental idea of the IC in the
Southern Midwest of the United States, Fairchild Semiconductor, a newly founded
company on the west coast created the planar technologies, which are the basic
technologies for modern IC.
The fundamental idea of the technology was to stabilize the device operation
by covering the entire silicon chip surface excluding the electrode areas
by silicon dioxide (SiO2) film with stable characteristics.
This technology, although invented by Jean Hoerni (also in the same company),
the individual responsible for applying it to IC was Noyce, who was also one
of the central figures in founding Fairchild Semiconductor. The excellent
part of Noyce's idea was that the SiO2 film did not just act as a film to
protect the surface, it also played the role of formation of elements and
inter-element connections and allowed for higher-level integration on the
IC.
Regarding the technology, Noyce started with, “I wondered what would happen
if we put one transistor next to another.” He then frankly described, “The
surface of the wafer covered by oxidized film would be mechanically and chemically
stable, and it would be possible to connect the device electrodes by metal
inter-connects formed by vapor deposition on the film.” “Well, not just two,
but a multitude of transistors could be formed on a single chip, meaning that
we should be able to create complex circuits.”
Picture A: Robert Noyce, at the time he invented the planar IC.
Picture B: The first IC commercialized by Fairchild in 1961. (Micrologic Series
Flip-Flop Circuit)
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