Transistor Museum GE Transistor Oral History Hall Page3

EARLY TRANSISTOR HISTORY AT GENERAL ELECTRIC

Dr. Robert N. Hall

Oral History – Robert Hall

(Continued)

During his long career involving semiconductor research, Dr. Hall has received a variety of honors and recognitions. A summary includes:

1963: David Sarnoff Award in Electronics.

1970: GE Corporate Coolidge Fellow.

1976: IEEE Jack A. Morton Award for “meritorious achievement in the field of solid-state devices”.

1976: Bohmische Physical Society membership “in recognition of development of high purity germanium fro nuclear spectroscopy”.

1977: Electrochemical Society Award in Solid State Science and Technology.

1977: Elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

1978: Elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

1979: Served as a member of the American Physical Study Group on Solar Photovoltaics.

1989: Received the Marconi International Fellowship Award for the “first realization of the semiconductor laser, a basic element of optical fiber communication”.

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Beginning in 1948, Dr. Hall has authored hundreds of semiconductor-related technical articles. This is a partial listing:

1) High Frequency Proton Source, R.S.I. 19, 905, (1948).

2) Recrystallization Purification of Germanium, Phys. Rev. 78, 645 (1950).

3) P-N Junctions Prepared by Impurity Diffusion, Phys. Rev. 80, 467 (1950).

4) Electron Hole Recombination in Germanium, Phys. Rev. 87, 387 (1952).

5) P-N Junction Produced by Growth Rate Variation, Phys. Rev. 88, 139 (1952).

Oral History – Robert Hall (Continued)

6) Power Rectifiers and Transistors, Proc. IRE, 40, 1512 (1952).

7) Remote Base Power Transistor, Electronic Components Conf Proc, Los Angeles, Cal, (1955).

8) Fabrication Techniques for High-Frequency Transistors, Fortschritte der Hochfrquenz Technik 4, 129, Academic Press, Frankfurt, Germany, (1958).

9) Tunnel Diodes, IRE Transactions on Electron Devices, ED-7, 1 (1960).

10) Coherent Light Emissions from GaAs Junctions, with Fenner, Kingsley, Soltys and Carlson, Phys. Rev. Letters, 9,399, (1962).

11) Semiconductor P-N Junction Lasers, Student Quarterly and EE Digest, (May 1963).

12) Polka Dot Solar Cell, with Soltys, Proc. 14^th Photovoltaic Specialist Conf, p550, (1980).

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This is a section of a GE transistor datasheet from Feb 1958, extolling the high frequency performance of the new “rate grown” 2N78 transistor. This process was developed by DR. Hall, and GE manufactured millions of transistors using this process.

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