Semiconductors

Semiconductors[edit]

In early 1952, Texas Instruments purchased a patent license to produce germanium transistors from Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T, for $25,000, beginning production by the end of the year. Haggerty brought Gordon Teal to the company due to his expertise in growing semiconductor crystals while at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Teal's first assignment was to direct TI's research laboratory. At the end of 1952, Texas Instruments announced that it had expanded to 2,000 employees and $17 million in sales.^[22]

Among his new hires was Willis Adcock, who joined TI early in 1953. Adcock, who like Teal was a physical chemist, began leading a small research group focused on the task of fabricating grown-junction, silicon, single-crystal, small-signal transistors.^[23] Adcock later became the first TI Principal Fellow.^[24]

First silicon transistor and integrated circuits[edit]

Transistorized "logic" chip, an integrated circuit produced by TI

In January 1954, Morris Tanenbaum at Bell Telephone Laboratories created the first workable silicon transistor.^[23] This work was reported in the spring of 1954, at the IRE off-the-record conference on solid-state devices, and was later published in the Journal of Applied Physics. Working independently in April 1954, Gordon Teal at TI created the first commercial silicon transistor and tested it on April 14, 1954. On May 10, 1954, at the Institute of Radio Engineers National Conference on Airborne Electronics in Dayton, Ohio, Teal presented a paper: "Some Recent Developments in Silicon and Germanium Materials and Devices".^[25]

In 1954, Texas Instruments designed and manufactured the first transistor radio. The Regency TR-1 used germanium transistors, as silicon transistors were much more expensive at the time. This was an effort by Haggerty to increase market demand for transistors.

Jack Kilby, an employee at TI, invented the integrated circuit in 1958.^[26] Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958, and successfully demonstrated the world's first working integrated circuit on September 12, 1958.^[27] Six months later, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor (who went on to co-found Intel) independently developed the integrated circuit with integrated interconnect, and is also considered an inventor of the integrated circuit.^[28] In 1969, Kilby was awarded the National Medal of Science, and in 1982 he was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame.^[29] Kilby also won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part of the invention of the integrated circuit.^[30] Noyce's chip, made at Fairchild, was made of silicon, while Kilby's chip was made of germanium. In 2008, TI named its new development laboratory "Kilby Labs" after Jack Kilby.^[31]

In 2011, Intel, Samsung, LG, ST-Ericsson, Huawei's HiSilicon Technologies subsidiary, Via Telecom, and three other undisclosed chipmakers licensed the C2C link specification developed by Arteris Inc. and Texas Instruments.^[32]

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