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Oral History – John Saby
(Continued)
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“Naturally”, since
semiconductor crystals must be sawed, this part of HMED product development
became the initial home of point contact diodes, and ultimately pct
transistors. The Electronics Lab
(E-Lab) support was limited to very low level, purely engineering for pct
transistors only. In about 1949 or
1950 an Electronics Lab section was organized under the direction of Paul
Jordan. [EE with 5 – 10 years GE
contributions]. I joined the E.D. section of the E-Lab under Jordan in Feb
1951. In place was a significant effort developing “alloy” junction
rectifiers per the GE Research Labs process, invented and patented by R.N.
Hall and Crawford Dunlap. When I
came from the Cornell Physics Department, Jordan asked me investigate
possible “control devices” using this process. (GE didn’t originally use the term “transistor” because of
possible patent complications with Bell Labs). Also, we called the process “alloy-diffusion” because of the
general opinion at GE that slight diffusion of indium into the N-type
germanium, moving the actual junction with the highest electric field into
undisturbed crystal, away from the possibly disturbed re-crystalized P-type
layer. This was “pooh-poohed” by
most, because the diffusion constant of indium into germanium was thought
to be too small to permit significant diffusion during the short time of
the process. I later proved
(published in Physical Review) that the “ridiculously small” amount of
diffusion is more than adequate.
However, “alloy”, rather than “alloy-diffusion” is the universally
used term.
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Oral History – John Saby
(Continued)
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When I
joined in 1951, Paul Jordan, Addison Sheckler and Vernon Ozarow were
already on the staff there. Jordan
and Sheckler had previously developed a “fractional crystallization”
purification process for germanium, causing mystification about GE’s
ability to buy and use raw germanium in production quantities, previously
rejected by competitors. This
process was developed independently from Bill Pfann’s “zone purification”,
and it was capable of comparable purity.
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This photo
illustrates the packaging used by GE in the early 1950s for the
commercially successful germanium rectifier products, which were
manufactured using the
“alloy-diffusion” process developed by R.N. Hall and Crawford Dunlap
at the GE Research Labs. John Saby extended this basic technology to create
a “control device” in 1951, which later become known as the alloy junction
transistor.
Go
To Saby Oral History, Page 3
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