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A point-contact transistor was the rst type of solidstate electronic transistor ever constructed. It was developed by research scientists John Bardeen and Walter
Brattain at Bell Laboratories in December, 1947.[1] They
worked in a group led by physicist William Shockley. The
group had been working together on experiments and theories of electric eld eects in solid state materials, with
the aim of replacing vacuum tubes with a smaller, less
power-consuming device.
1 Forming
To make a point-contact transistor work, a brief highcurrent pulse was used to fuse the wires to the germanium
and create the P-type material around the point of contact, a technique called 'electrical forming'. Usually this
was done by charging a capacitor of a specied value to a
specied voltage then discharging it between the emitter
and the base electrodes. Forming had a signicant failure
rate, so many commercial encapsulated transistors had to
be discarded; an uncased device as could be made by amateurs could be re-formed if damaged.[2]
1
Characteristics
See also
Crystal radio
References
External links
The Point-contact Transistor
Picture of the rst transistor ever assembled
(2092x2086)
PBS article
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