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Boss DS-1

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The Boss DS-1 is a distortion pedal for guitar, manufactured by the Roland Corporation under the brand name Boss since 1978. The first distortion effects unit made by Boss, it has become a classic effect, used by many notable guitar players.

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112-614: Boss released a successor, the DS-2. The DS-2, "Turbo Distortion" was released in 1987, and is very similar to the DS-1 except that it features a "turbo" setting, which produces a sharper midrange tone. Boss released a black limited edition 40th Anniversary model of the DS-1 in 2017. DS-1 – The original pedal, released in 1978. DS-1 BK – a Guitar Center exclusive with orange font on a black body, released in 2016 and limited to 3,000 units. DS-1-4A – A 40th-anniversary addition with gold font on

224-440: A current requires the flow of electrons, and semiconductors have their valence bands filled, preventing the entire flow of new electrons. Several developed techniques allow semiconducting materials to behave like conducting materials, such as doping or gating . These modifications have two outcomes: n-type and p-type . These refer to the excess or shortage of electrons, respectively. A balanced number of electrons would cause

336-439: A cut-off frequency of one cycle per second, too low for any practical applications, but an effective application of the available theory. At Bell Labs , William Shockley and A. Holden started investigating solid-state amplifiers in 1938. The first p–n junction in silicon was observed by Russell Ohl about 1941 when a specimen was found to be light-sensitive, with a sharp boundary between p-type impurity at one end and n-type at

448-501: A field-effect transistor , or may have two kinds of charge carriers in bipolar junction transistor devices. Compared with the vacuum tube , transistors are generally smaller and require less power to operate. Certain vacuum tubes have advantages over transistors at very high operating frequencies or high operating voltages, such as Traveling-wave tubes and Gyrotrons . Many types of transistors are made to standardized specifications by multiple manufacturers. The thermionic triode ,

560-532: A p-n-p transistor symbol, the arrow " P oints i N P roudly". However, this does not apply to MOSFET-based transistor symbols as the arrow is typically reversed (i.e. the arrow for the n-p-n points inside). The field-effect transistor , sometimes called a unipolar transistor , uses either electrons (in n-channel FET ) or holes (in p-channel FET ) for conduction. The four terminals of the FET are named source , gate , drain , and body ( substrate ). On most FETs,

672-476: A vacuum tube invented in 1907, enabled amplified radio technology and long-distance telephony . The triode, however, was a fragile device that consumed a substantial amount of power. In 1909, physicist William Eccles discovered the crystal diode oscillator . Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed a patent for a field-effect transistor (FET) in Canada in 1925, intended as a solid-state replacement for

784-424: A 2SC2240 Toshiba transistor, which is only special insofar as it is cheap and reliable. The transistor boost stage consists of two highpass filters in series, followed by a Common emitter amplifier. This serves to remove unnecessary bass frequencies before the distortion stage, preventing the signal from accumulating muddiness as it is amplified. This stage provides a 35 dB boost to the signal, and introduces

896-406: A black body, released in 2017. DS-1W – WazaCraft version, released in 2023. DS-1-B50A – Orange metallic paint to commemorate the company's 50th anniversary; released in 2023 and limited to 7,000 units. The blueprint of the DS-1 circuit is simple, with a pair of in- and output buffers surrounding a transistor boost stage, an operational amplifier gain stage with hard clipping diodes , and

1008-513: A common semi-insulator is gallium arsenide . Some materials, such as titanium dioxide , can even be used as insulating materials for some applications, while being treated as wide-gap semiconductors for other applications. The partial filling of the states at the bottom of the conduction band can be understood as adding electrons to that band. The electrons do not stay indefinitely (due to the natural thermal recombination ) but they can move around for some time. The actual concentration of electrons

1120-423: A completely full valence band is inert, not conducting any current. If an electron is taken out of the valence band, then the trajectory that the electron would normally have taken is now missing its charge. For the purposes of electric current, this combination of the full valence band, minus the electron, can be converted into a picture of a completely empty band containing a positively charged particle that moves in

1232-474: A current to flow throughout the material. Homojunctions occur when two differently doped semiconducting materials are joined. For example, a configuration could consist of p-doped and n-doped germanium . This results in an exchange of electrons and holes between the differently doped semiconducting materials. The n-doped germanium would have an excess of electrons, and the p-doped germanium would have an excess of holes. The transfer occurs until an equilibrium

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1344-578: A device had been built. In 1934, inventor Oskar Heil patented a similar device in Europe. From November 17 to December 23, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T 's Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey , performed experiments and observed that when two gold point contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium , a signal was produced with the output power greater than the input. Solid State Physics Group leader William Shockley saw

1456-600: A few hundred milliwatts, but power and audio fidelity gradually increased as better transistors became available and amplifier architecture evolved. Modern transistor audio amplifiers of up to a few hundred watts are common and relatively inexpensive. Before transistors were developed, vacuum (electron) tubes (or in the UK "thermionic valves" or just "valves") were the main active components in electronic equipment. The key advantages that have allowed transistors to replace vacuum tubes in most applications are Transistors may have

1568-425: A field-effect transistor (FET) by trying to modulate the conductivity of a semiconductor, but was unsuccessful, mainly due to problems with the surface states , the dangling bond , and the germanium and copper compound materials. Trying to understand the mysterious reasons behind this failure led them instead to invent the bipolar point-contact and junction transistors . In 1948, the point-contact transistor

1680-410: A guide to the construction of more capable and reliable devices. Alexander Graham Bell used the light-sensitive property of selenium to transmit sound over a beam of light in 1880. A working solar cell, of low efficiency, was constructed by Charles Fritts in 1883, using a metal plate coated with selenium and a thin layer of gold; the device became commercially useful in photographic light meters in

1792-408: A low forward voltage will make the pedal quieter but with a more saturated distortion, a diode with a high forward voltage will be louder but with less available distortion. Last but not least, the humble " big muff pi" style tone control immediately preceding the output buffer is a fixed cutoff lowpass filter and a fixed cuttoff highpass filter which attenuate either the low or high end, depending on

1904-445: A low-pressure chamber to create plasma . A common etch gas is chlorofluorocarbon , or more commonly known Freon . A high radio-frequency voltage between the cathode and anode is what creates the plasma in the chamber. The silicon wafer is located on the cathode, which causes it to be hit by the positively charged ions that are released from the plasma. The result is silicon that is etched anisotropically . The last process

2016-626: A non-equilibrium situation. This introduces electrons and holes to the system, which interact via a process called ambipolar diffusion . Whenever thermal equilibrium is disturbed in a semiconducting material, the number of holes and electrons changes. Such disruptions can occur as a result of a temperature difference or photons , which can enter the system and create electrons and holes. The processes that create or annihilate electrons and holes are called generation and recombination, respectively. In certain semiconductors, excited electrons can relax by emitting light instead of producing heat. Controlling

2128-519: A pair is completed. Such carrier traps are sometimes purposely added to reduce the time needed to reach the steady-state. The conductivity of semiconductors may easily be modified by introducing impurities into their crystal lattice . The process of adding controlled impurities to a semiconductor is known as doping . The amount of impurity, or dopant, added to an intrinsic (pure) semiconductor varies its level of conductivity. Doped semiconductors are referred to as extrinsic . By adding impurity to

2240-412: A particular type, varies depending on the collector current. In the example of a light-switch circuit, as shown, the resistor is chosen to provide enough base current to ensure the transistor is saturated. The base resistor value is calculated from the supply voltage, transistor C-E junction voltage drop, collector current, and amplification factor beta. The common-emitter amplifier is designed so that

2352-467: A silicon MOS transistor in 1959 and successfully demonstrated a working MOS device with their Bell Labs team in 1960. Their team included E. E. LaBate and E. I. Povilonis who fabricated the device; M. O. Thurston, L. A. D’Asaro, and J. R. Ligenza who developed the diffusion processes, and H. K. Gummel and R. Lindner who characterized the device. With its high scalability , much lower power consumption, and higher density than bipolar junction transistors,

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2464-501: A silicon atom in the crystal, a vacant state (an electron "hole") is created, which can move around the lattice and function as a charge carrier. Group V elements have five valence electrons, which allows them to act as a donor; substitution of these atoms for silicon creates an extra free electron. Therefore, a silicon crystal doped with boron creates a p-type semiconductor whereas one doped with phosphorus results in an n-type material. During manufacture , dopants can be diffused into

2576-568: A small amount of distortion. The operational amplifier gain stage is the most important part of the Boss DS-1 circuit, featuring the clipping diodes , Op-amps and further filters which refine and color the sound. The op-amp stage is the only part of the circuit which has undergone any real changes over the pedals history. Originally, in 1978, the circuit was built around the Toshiba TA7136AP pre-amplifier, not an op-amp, and this gave

2688-605: A small change in voltage ( V in ) changes the small current through the base of the transistor whose current amplification combined with the properties of the circuit means that small swings in V in produce large changes in V out . Various configurations of single transistor amplifiers are possible, with some providing current gain, some voltage gain, and some both. From mobile phones to televisions , vast numbers of products include amplifiers for sound reproduction , radio transmission , and signal processing . The first discrete-transistor audio amplifiers barely supplied

2800-783: A theory of solid-state physics , which developed greatly in the first half of the 20th century. In 1878 Edwin Herbert Hall demonstrated the deflection of flowing charge carriers by an applied magnetic field, the Hall effect . The discovery of the electron by J.J. Thomson in 1897 prompted theories of electron-based conduction in solids. Karl Baedeker , by observing a Hall effect with the reverse sign to that in metals, theorized that copper iodide had positive charge carriers. Johan Koenigsberger  [ de ] classified solid materials like metals, insulators, and "variable conductors" in 1914 although his student Josef Weiss already introduced

2912-494: A tone control. It features the same JFET switching circuit as some other Boss effects units, allowing a simple momentary push button to reroute the signal, either bypassing the effect or engaging it. In either state, the signal will pass through the input and output buffer stage of the effect, and this is the key differentiating factor between Boss pedals and "true bypass" pedals. The buffers themselves are similar, both Common collector amplifiers with unity gain. They each feature

3024-440: A type of 3D non-planar multi-gate MOSFET, originated from the research of Digh Hisamoto and his team at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in 1989. Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics , many people consider them one of the 20th century's greatest inventions. The invention of the first transistor at Bell Labs was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009. Other Milestones include

3136-476: A vacuum, though with a different effective mass . Because the electrons behave like an ideal gas, one may also think about conduction in very simplistic terms such as the Drude model , and introduce concepts such as electron mobility . For partial filling at the top of the valence band, it is helpful to introduce the concept of an electron hole . Although the electrons in the valence band are always moving around,

3248-567: A variety of proportions. These compounds share with better-known semiconductors the properties of intermediate conductivity and a rapid variation of conductivity with temperature, as well as occasional negative resistance . Such disordered materials lack the rigid crystalline structure of conventional semiconductors such as silicon. They are generally used in thin film structures, which do not require material of higher electronic quality, being relatively insensitive to impurities and radiation damage. Almost all of today's electronic technology involves

3360-416: A weaker input signal, acting as an amplifier . It can also be used as an electrically controlled switch , where the amount of current is determined by other circuit elements. There are two types of transistors, with slight differences in how they are used: The top image in this section represents a typical bipolar transistor in a circuit. A charge flows between emitter and collector terminals depending on

3472-461: A working bipolar NPN junction amplifying germanium transistor. Bell announced the discovery of this new "sandwich" transistor in a press release on July 4, 1951. The first high-frequency transistor was the surface-barrier germanium transistor developed by Philco in 1953, capable of operating at frequencies up to 60 MHz . They were made by etching depressions into an n-type germanium base from both sides with jets of indium(III) sulfate until it

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3584-420: Is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power . It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics . It is composed of semiconductor material , usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit . A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because

3696-415: Is a combination of processes that are used to prepare semiconducting materials for ICs. One process is called thermal oxidation , which forms silicon dioxide on the surface of the silicon . This is used as a gate insulator and field oxide . Other processes are called photomasks and photolithography . This process is what creates the patterns on the circuit in the integrated circuit. Ultraviolet light

3808-547: Is a critical element for fabricating most electronic circuits . Semiconductor devices can display a range of different useful properties, such as passing current more easily in one direction than the other, showing variable resistance, and having sensitivity to light or heat. Because the electrical properties of a semiconductor material can be modified by doping and by the application of electrical fields or light, devices made from semiconductors can be used for amplification, switching, and energy conversion . The term semiconductor

3920-472: Is a function of the temperature, as the probability of getting enough thermal energy to produce a pair increases with temperature, being approximately exp(− E G / kT ) , where k is the Boltzmann constant , T is the absolute temperature and E G is bandgap. The probability of meeting is increased by carrier traps – impurities or dislocations which can trap an electron or hole and hold it until

4032-453: Is a material that is between the conductor and insulator in ability to conduct electrical current. In many cases their conducting properties may be altered in useful ways by introducing impurities (" doping ") into the crystal structure . When two differently doped regions exist in the same crystal, a semiconductor junction is created. The behavior of charge carriers , which include electrons , ions , and electron holes , at these junctions

4144-428: Is also used to describe materials used in high capacity, medium- to high-voltage cables as part of their insulation, and these materials are often plastic XLPE ( Cross-linked polyethylene ) with carbon black. The conductivity of silicon is increased by adding a small amount (of the order of 1 in 10 ) of pentavalent ( antimony , phosphorus , or arsenic ) or trivalent ( boron , gallium , indium ) atoms. This process

4256-404: Is called diffusion . This is the process that gives the semiconducting material its desired semiconducting properties. It is also known as doping . The process introduces an impure atom to the system, which creates the p–n junction . To get the impure atoms embedded in the silicon wafer, the wafer is first put in a 1,100 degree Celsius chamber. The atoms are injected in and eventually diffuse with

4368-780: Is inert, blocking the passage of other electrons via that state. The energies of these quantum states are critical since a state is partially filled only if its energy is near the Fermi level (see Fermi–Dirac statistics ). High conductivity in material comes from it having many partially filled states and much state delocalization. Metals are good electrical conductors and have many partially filled states with energies near their Fermi level. Insulators , by contrast, have few partially filled states, their Fermi levels sit within band gaps with few energy states to occupy. Importantly, an insulator can be made to conduct by increasing its temperature: heating provides energy to promote some electrons across

4480-418: Is known as doping, and the resulting semiconductors are known as doped or extrinsic semiconductors . Apart from doping, the conductivity of a semiconductor can be improved by increasing its temperature. This is contrary to the behavior of a metal, in which conductivity decreases with an increase in temperature. The modern understanding of the properties of a semiconductor relies on quantum physics to explain

4592-845: Is neither a very good insulator nor a very good conductor. However, one important feature of semiconductors (and some insulators, known as semi-insulators ) is that their conductivity can be increased and controlled by doping with impurities and gating with electric fields. Doping and gating move either the conduction or valence band much closer to the Fermi level and greatly increase the number of partially filled states. Some wider-bandgap semiconductor materials are sometimes referred to as semi-insulators . When undoped, these have electrical conductivity nearer to that of electrical insulators, however they can be doped (making them as useful as semiconductors). Semi-insulators find niche applications in micro-electronics, such as substrates for HEMT . An example of

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4704-481: Is not observed in modern devices, for example, at the 65 nm technology node. For low noise at narrow bandwidth , the higher input resistance of the FET is advantageous. FETs are divided into two families: junction FET ( JFET ) and insulated gate FET (IGFET). The IGFET is more commonly known as a metal–oxide–semiconductor FET ( MOSFET ), reflecting its original construction from layers of metal (the gate), oxide (the insulation), and semiconductor. Unlike IGFETs,

4816-421: Is often easier and cheaper to use a standard microcontroller and write a computer program to carry out a control function than to design an equivalent mechanical system. A transistor can use a small signal applied between one pair of its terminals to control a much larger signal at another pair of terminals, a property called gain . It can produce a stronger output signal, a voltage or current, proportional to

4928-404: Is reached by a process called recombination , which causes the migrating electrons from the n-type to come in contact with the migrating holes from the p-type. The result of this process is a narrow strip of immobile ions , which causes an electric field across the junction. A difference in electric potential on a semiconducting material would cause it to leave thermal equilibrium and create

5040-413: Is the basis of diodes , transistors , and most modern electronics . Some examples of semiconductors are silicon , germanium , gallium arsenide , and elements near the so-called " metalloid staircase " on the periodic table . After silicon, gallium arsenide is the second-most common semiconductor and is used in laser diodes , solar cells , microwave-frequency integrated circuits , and others. Silicon

5152-504: Is typically very dilute, and so (unlike in metals) it is possible to think of the electrons in the conduction band of a semiconductor as a sort of classical ideal gas , where the electrons fly around freely without being subject to the Pauli exclusion principle . In most semiconductors, the conduction bands have a parabolic dispersion relation , and so these electrons respond to forces (electric field, magnetic field, etc.) much as they would in

5264-402: Is used along with a photoresist layer to create a chemical change that generates the patterns for the circuit. The etching is the next process that is required. The part of the silicon that was not covered by the photoresist layer from the previous step can now be etched. The main process typically used today is called plasma etching . Plasma etching usually involves an etch gas pumped in

5376-532: The Annalen der Physik und Chemie in 1835; Rosenschöld's findings were ignored. Simon Sze stated that Braun's research was the earliest systematic study of semiconductor devices. Also in 1874, Arthur Schuster found that a copper oxide layer on wires had rectification properties that ceased when the wires are cleaned. William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day observed the photovoltaic effect in selenium in 1876. A unified explanation of these phenomena required

5488-429: The Pauli exclusion principle ). These states are associated with the electronic band structure of the material. Electrical conductivity arises due to the presence of electrons in states that are delocalized (extending through the material), however in order to transport electrons a state must be partially filled , containing an electron only part of the time. If the state is always occupied with an electron, then it

5600-454: The Siege of Leningrad after successful completion. In 1926, Julius Edgar Lilienfeld patented a device resembling a field-effect transistor , but it was not practical. R. Hilsch  [ de ] and R. W. Pohl  [ de ] in 1938 demonstrated a solid-state amplifier using a structure resembling the control grid of a vacuum tube; although the device displayed power gain, it had

5712-445: The band gap , be accompanied by the emission of thermal energy (in the form of phonons ) or radiation (in the form of photons ). In some states, the generation and recombination of electron–hole pairs are in equipoise. The number of electron-hole pairs in the steady state at a given temperature is determined by quantum statistical mechanics . The precise quantum mechanical mechanisms of generation and recombination are governed by

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5824-470: The conservation of energy and conservation of momentum . As the probability that electrons and holes meet together is proportional to the product of their numbers, the product is in the steady-state nearly constant at a given temperature, providing that there is no significant electric field (which might "flush" carriers of both types, or move them from neighbor regions containing more of them to meet together) or externally driven pair generation. The product

5936-546: The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), the MOSFET was invented at Bell Labs between 1955 and 1960. Transistors revolutionized the field of electronics and paved the way for smaller and cheaper radios , calculators , computers , and other electronic devices. Most transistors are made from very pure silicon , and some from germanium , but certain other semiconductor materials are sometimes used. A transistor may have only one kind of charge carrier in

6048-399: The surface state barrier that prevented the external electric field from penetrating the material. In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick accidentally grew a layer of silicon dioxide over the silicon wafer, for which they observed surface passivation effects. By 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors;

6160-461: The 1930s. Point-contact microwave detector rectifiers made of lead sulfide were used by Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1904; the cat's-whisker detector using natural galena or other materials became a common device in the development of radio . However, it was somewhat unpredictable in operation and required manual adjustment for best performance. In 1906, H.J. Round observed light emission when electric current passed through silicon carbide crystals,

6272-519: The JFET gate forms a p–n diode with the channel which lies between the source and drains. Functionally, this makes the n-channel JFET the solid-state equivalent of the vacuum tube triode which, similarly, forms a diode between its grid and cathode . Also, both devices operate in the depletion-mode , they both have a high input impedance, and they both conduct current under the control of an input voltage. Semiconductor material A semiconductor

6384-412: The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits, allowing the integration of more than 10,000 transistors in a single IC. Bardeen and Brattain's 1948 inversion layer concept forms the basis of CMOS technology today. The CMOS (complementary MOS ) was invented by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963. The first report of a floating-gate MOSFET

6496-775: The Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates, I.D.E.A. and Texas Instruments of Dallas, Texas, the TR-1 was manufactured in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was a near pocket-sized radio with four transistors and one germanium diode. The industrial design was outsourced to the Chicago firm of Painter, Teague and Petertil. It was initially released in one of six colours: black, ivory, mandarin red, cloud grey, mahogany and olive green. Other colours shortly followed. The first production all-transistor car radio

6608-416: The band gap, inducing partially filled states in both the band of states beneath the band gap ( valence band ) and the band of states above the band gap ( conduction band ). An (intrinsic) semiconductor has a band gap that is smaller than that of an insulator and at room temperature, significant numbers of electrons can be excited to cross the band gap. A pure semiconductor, however, is not very useful, as it

6720-431: The basis of modern digital electronics since the late 20th century, paving the way for the digital age . The US Patent and Trademark Office calls it a "groundbreaking invention that transformed life and culture around the world". Its ability to be mass-produced by a highly automated process ( semiconductor device fabrication ), from relatively basic materials, allows astonishingly low per-transistor costs. MOSFETs are

6832-404: The body is connected to the source inside the package, and this will be assumed for the following description. In a FET, the drain-to-source current flows via a conducting channel that connects the source region to the drain region. The conductivity is varied by the electric field that is produced when a voltage is applied between the gate and source terminals, hence the current flowing between

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6944-448: The centerpiece of the circuit to this day. Most of the distortion itself is handled by the silicon 1N4148 clipping diodes organized in a hard clipping arrangement, clipping any signal above 0.7v and below -0.7v. One of the popular modifications to the DS-1 consists of replacing one or both of the diodes, labeled D4 and D5, with LED or germanium diodes. Depending on the diodes, the pedal can take on many different sonic characters. A diode with

7056-437: The collector to the emitter. If the voltage difference between the collector and emitter were zero (or near zero), the collector current would be limited only by the load resistance (light bulb) and the supply voltage. This is called saturation because the current is flowing from collector to emitter freely. When saturated, the switch is said to be on . The use of bipolar transistors for switching applications requires biasing

7168-406: The concentration and regions of p- and n-type dopants. A single semiconductor device crystal can have many p- and n-type regions; the p–n junctions between these regions are responsible for the useful electronic behavior. Using a hot-point probe , one can determine quickly whether a semiconductor sample is p- or n-type. A few of the properties of semiconductor materials were observed throughout

7280-455: The concept of a field-effect transistor (FET) in 1926, but it was not possible to construct a working device at that time. The first working device was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by physicists John Bardeen , Walter Brattain , and William Shockley at Bell Labs who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their achievement. The most widely used type of transistor is

7392-445: The concept of an inversion layer, forms the basis of CMOS and DRAM technology today. In the early years of the semiconductor industry , companies focused on the junction transistor , a relatively bulky device that was difficult to mass-produce , limiting it to several specialized applications. Field-effect transistors (FETs) were theorized as potential alternatives, but researchers could not get them to work properly, largely due to

7504-489: The concept of band gaps had been developed. Walter H. Schottky and Nevill Francis Mott developed models of the potential barrier and of the characteristics of a metal–semiconductor junction . By 1938, Boris Davydov had developed a theory of the copper-oxide rectifier, identifying the effect of the p–n junction and the importance of minority carriers and surface states. Agreement between theoretical predictions (based on developing quantum mechanics) and experimental results

7616-449: The controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more in miniature form are found embedded in integrated circuits . Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics , many people consider them one of the 20th century's greatest inventions. Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed

7728-559: The current in the base. Because the base and emitter connections behave like a semiconductor diode, a voltage drop develops between them. The amount of this drop, determined by the transistor's material, is referred to as V BE . (Base Emitter Voltage) Transistors are commonly used in digital circuits as electronic switches which can be either in an "on" or "off" state, both for high-power applications such as switched-mode power supplies and for low-power applications such as logic gates . Important parameters for this application include

7840-456: The current switched, the voltage handled, and the switching speed, characterized by the rise and fall times . In a switching circuit, the goal is to simulate, as near as possible, the ideal switch having the properties of an open circuit when off, the short circuit when on, and an instantaneous transition between the two states. Parameters are chosen such that the "off" output is limited to leakage currents too small to affect connected circuitry,

7952-460: The drain and source is controlled by the voltage applied between the gate and source. As the gate–source voltage ( V GS ) is increased, the drain–source current ( I DS ) increases exponentially for V GS below threshold, and then at a roughly quadratic rate: ( I DS ∝ ( V GS − V T ) , where V T is the threshold voltage at which drain current begins) in the " space-charge-limited " region above threshold. A quadratic behavior

8064-583: The effect more of a warm, rich sound. In 1994, the Toshiba pre-amps were nearing the end of their stock life, and so the circuit had to be modified in order to play host to an easier to find dual op amp, the Rohm BA728N. This version is slightly quieter than the original, but is otherwise essentially the same. The Rohm op-amp was replaced in 2000 by the Mitsubishi M5223AL op-amp, which remains

8176-453: The electrical properties of materials. The properties of the time-temperature coefficient of resistance, rectification, and light-sensitivity were observed starting in the early 19th century. Thomas Johann Seebeck was the first to notice that semiconductors exhibit special feature such that experiment concerning an Seebeck effect emerged with much stronger result when applying semiconductors, in 1821. In 1833, Michael Faraday reported that

8288-530: The electrons in the conduction band). When ionizing radiation strikes a semiconductor, it may excite an electron out of its energy level and consequently leave a hole. This process is known as electron-hole pair generation . Electron-hole pairs are constantly generated from thermal energy as well, in the absence of any external energy source. Electron-hole pairs are also apt to recombine. Conservation of energy demands that these recombination events, in which an electron loses an amount of energy larger than

8400-514: The fast response of crystal detectors. Considerable research and development of silicon materials occurred during the war to develop detectors of consistent quality. Detector and power rectifiers could not amplify a signal. Many efforts were made to develop a solid-state amplifier and were successful in developing a device called the point contact transistor which could amplify 20 dB or more. In 1922, Oleg Losev developed two-terminal, negative resistance amplifiers for radio, but he died in

8512-463: The first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface. They showed that silicon dioxide insulated, protected silicon wafers and prevented dopants from diffusing into the wafer. After this, J.R. Ligenza and W.G. Spitzer studied the mechanism of thermally grown oxides, fabricated a high quality Si/ SiO 2 stack and published their results in 1960. Following this research, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng proposed

8624-454: The following limitations: Transistors are categorized by Hence, a particular transistor may be described as silicon, surface-mount, BJT, NPN, low-power, high-frequency switch . Convenient mnemonic to remember the type of transistor (represented by an electrical symbol ) involves the direction of the arrow. For the BJT , on an n-p-n transistor symbol, the arrow will " N ot P oint i N" . On

8736-450: The idea of a field-effect transistor that used an electric field as a "grid" was not new. Instead, what Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley invented in 1947 was the first point-contact transistor . To acknowledge this accomplishment, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain jointly received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect". Shockley's team initially attempted to build

8848-418: The inventions of the junction transistor in 1948 and the MOSFET in 1959. The MOSFET is by far the most widely used transistor, in applications ranging from computers and electronics to communications technology such as smartphones . It has been considered the most important transistor, possibly the most important invention in electronics, and the device that enabled modern electronics. It has been

8960-543: The material's majority carrier . The opposite carrier is called the minority carrier , which exists due to thermal excitation at a much lower concentration compared to the majority carrier. For example, the pure semiconductor silicon has four valence electrons that bond each silicon atom to its neighbors. In silicon, the most common dopants are group III and group V elements. Group III elements all contain three valence electrons, causing them to function as acceptors when used to dope silicon. When an acceptor atom replaces

9072-613: The mechanical encoding from punched metal cards. The first prototype pocket transistor radio was shown by INTERMETALL, a company founded by Herbert Mataré in 1952, at the Internationale Funkausstellung Düsseldorf from August 29 to September 6, 1953. The first production-model pocket transistor radio was the Regency TR-1 , released in October 1954. Produced as a joint venture between

9184-435: The mid-19th and first decades of the 20th century. The first practical application of semiconductors in electronics was the 1904 development of the cat's-whisker detector , a primitive semiconductor diode used in early radio receivers. Developments in quantum physics led in turn to the invention of the transistor in 1947 and the integrated circuit in 1958. Semiconductors in their natural state are poor conductors because

9296-927: The most numerously produced artificial objects in history, with more than 13 sextillion manufactured by 2018. Although several companies each produce over a billion individually packaged (known as discrete ) MOS transistors every year, the vast majority are produced in integrated circuits (also known as ICs , microchips, or simply chips ), along with diodes , resistors , capacitors and other electronic components , to produce complete electronic circuits. A logic gate consists of up to about 20 transistors, whereas an advanced microprocessor , as of 2022, may contain as many as 57 billion MOSFETs. Transistors are often organized into logic gates in microprocessors to perform computation. The transistor's low cost, flexibility and reliability have made it ubiquitous. Transistorized mechatronic circuits have replaced electromechanical devices in controlling appliances and machinery. It

9408-505: The movement of charge carriers in a crystal lattice . Doping greatly increases the number of charge carriers within the crystal. When a semiconductor is doped by Group V elements, they will behave like donors creating free electrons , known as " n-type " doping. When a semiconductor is doped by Group III elements, they will behave like acceptors creating free holes, known as " p-type " doping. The semiconductor materials used in electronic devices are doped under precise conditions to control

9520-449: The other. A slice cut from the specimen at the p–n boundary developed a voltage when exposed to light. The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen , Walter Houser Brattain , and William Shockley at Bell Labs in 1947. Shockley had earlier theorized a field-effect amplifier made from germanium and silicon, but he failed to build such a working device, before eventually using germanium to invent

9632-508: The point-contact transistor. In France, during the war, Herbert Mataré had observed amplification between adjacent point contacts on a germanium base. After the war, Mataré's group announced their " Transistron " amplifier only shortly after Bell Labs announced the " transistor ". In 1954, physical chemist Morris Tanenbaum fabricated the first silicon junction transistor at Bell Labs . However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on

9744-467: The position of the potentiometer . The way the two filters are interconnected creates a notch, or scoop, around 500 Hz when the potentiometer is in the center position. The seasaw nature of the tone control leads to a -12 dB volume loss which gives the pedal an output of 350mV , which is suitable for most applications but does create issues with the DS-1 being able to achieve unity gain with higher level inputs. Transistor A transistor

9856-548: The potential in this, and over the next few months worked to greatly expand the knowledge of semiconductors . The term transistor was coined by John R. Pierce as a contraction of the term transresistance . According to Lillian Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch, Shockley proposed that Bell Labs' first patent for a transistor should be based on the field-effect and that he be named as the inventor. Having unearthed Lilienfeld's patents that went into obscurity years earlier, lawyers at Bell Labs advised against Shockley's proposal because

9968-524: The principle behind the light-emitting diode . Oleg Losev observed similar light emission in 1922, but at the time the effect had no practical use. Power rectifiers, using copper oxide and selenium, were developed in the 1920s and became commercially important as an alternative to vacuum tube rectifiers. The first semiconductor devices used galena , including German physicist Ferdinand Braun's crystal detector in 1874 and Indian physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose's radio crystal detector in 1901. In

10080-574: The pure semiconductors, the electrical conductivity may be varied by factors of thousands or millions. A 1 cm specimen of a metal or semiconductor has the order of 10 atoms. In a metal, every atom donates at least one free electron for conduction, thus 1 cm of metal contains on the order of 10 free electrons, whereas a 1 cm sample of pure germanium at 20   °C contains about 4.2 × 10 atoms, but only 2.5 × 10 free electrons and 2.5 × 10 holes. The addition of 0.001% of arsenic (an impurity) donates an extra 10 free electrons in

10192-629: The resistance of specimens of silver sulfide decreases when they are heated. This is contrary to the behavior of metallic substances such as copper. In 1839, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel reported observation of a voltage between a solid and a liquid electrolyte, when struck by light, the photovoltaic effect . In 1873, Willoughby Smith observed that selenium resistors exhibit decreasing resistance when light falls on them. In 1874, Karl Ferdinand Braun observed conduction and rectification in metallic sulfides , although this effect had been discovered earlier by Peter Munck af Rosenschöld ( sv ) writing for

10304-405: The resistance of the transistor in the "on" state is too small to affect circuitry, and the transition between the two states is fast enough not to have a detrimental effect. In a grounded-emitter transistor circuit, such as the light-switch circuit shown, as the base voltage rises, the emitter and collector currents rise exponentially. The collector voltage drops because of reduced resistance from

10416-534: The same volume and the electrical conductivity is increased by a factor of 10,000. The materials chosen as suitable dopants depend on the atomic properties of both the dopant and the material to be doped. In general, dopants that produce the desired controlled changes are classified as either electron acceptors or donors . Semiconductors doped with donor impurities are called n-type , while those doped with acceptor impurities are known as p-type . The n and p type designations indicate which charge carrier acts as

10528-472: The same way as the electron. Combined with the negative effective mass of the electrons at the top of the valence band, we arrive at a picture of a positively charged particle that responds to electric and magnetic fields just as a normal positively charged particle would do in a vacuum, again with some positive effective mass. This particle is called a hole, and the collection of holes in the valence band can again be understood in simple classical terms (as with

10640-591: The scale at which the materials are used. A high degree of crystalline perfection is also required, since faults in the crystal structure (such as dislocations , twins , and stacking faults ) interfere with the semiconducting properties of the material. Crystalline faults are a major cause of defective semiconductor devices. The larger the crystal, the more difficult it is to achieve the necessary perfection. Current mass production processes use crystal ingots between 100 and 300 mm (3.9 and 11.8 in) in diameter, grown as cylinders and sliced into wafers . There

10752-425: The semiconductor body by contact with gaseous compounds of the desired element, or ion implantation can be used to accurately position the doped regions. Some materials, when rapidly cooled to a glassy amorphous state, have semiconducting properties. These include B, Si , Ge, Se, and Te, and there are multiple theories to explain them. The history of the understanding of semiconductors begins with experiments on

10864-1007: The semiconductor composition and electrical current allows for the manipulation of the emitted light's properties. These semiconductors are used in the construction of light-emitting diodes and fluorescent quantum dots . Semiconductors with high thermal conductivity can be used for heat dissipation and improving thermal management of electronics. They play a crucial role in electric vehicles , high-brightness LEDs and power modules , among other applications. Semiconductors have large thermoelectric power factors making them useful in thermoelectric generators , as well as high thermoelectric figures of merit making them useful in thermoelectric coolers . A large number of elements and compounds have semiconducting properties, including: The most common semiconducting materials are crystalline solids, but amorphous and liquid semiconductors are also known. These include hydrogenated amorphous silicon and mixtures of arsenic , selenium , and tellurium in

10976-458: The silicon. After the process is completed and the silicon has reached room temperature, the doping process is done and the semiconducting wafer is almost prepared. Semiconductors are defined by their unique electric conductive behavior, somewhere between that of a conductor and an insulator. The differences between these materials can be understood in terms of the quantum states for electrons, each of which may contain zero or one electron (by

11088-407: The term Halbleiter (a semiconductor in modern meaning) in his Ph.D. thesis in 1910. Felix Bloch published a theory of the movement of electrons through atomic lattices in 1928. In 1930, B. Gudden  [ de ] stated that conductivity in semiconductors was due to minor concentrations of impurities. By 1931, the band theory of conduction had been established by Alan Herries Wilson and

11200-409: The transistor so that it operates between its cut-off region in the off-state and the saturation region ( on ). This requires sufficient base drive current. As the transistor provides current gain, it facilitates the switching of a relatively large current in the collector by a much smaller current into the base terminal. The ratio of these currents varies depending on the type of transistor, and even for

11312-483: The transistor, the company rushed to get its "transistron" into production for amplified use in France's telephone network, filing his first transistor patent application on August 13, 1948. The first bipolar junction transistors were invented by Bell Labs' William Shockley, who applied for patent (2,569,347) on June 26, 1948. On April 12, 1950, Bell Labs chemists Gordon Teal and Morgan Sparks successfully produced

11424-486: The triode. He filed identical patents in the United States in 1926 and 1928. However, he did not publish any research articles about his devices nor did his patents cite any specific examples of a working prototype. Because the production of high-quality semiconductor materials was still decades away, Lilienfeld's solid-state amplifier ideas would not have found practical use in the 1920s and 1930s, even if such

11536-406: The use of semiconductors, with the most important aspect being the integrated circuit (IC), which are found in desktops , laptops , scanners, cell-phones , and other electronic devices. Semiconductors for ICs are mass-produced. To create an ideal semiconducting material, chemical purity is paramount. Any small imperfection can have a drastic effect on how the semiconducting material behaves due to

11648-408: The widespread adoption of transistor radios. Seven million TR-63s were sold worldwide by the mid-1960s. Sony's success with transistor radios led to transistors replacing vacuum tubes as the dominant electronic technology in the late 1950s. The first working silicon transistor was developed at Bell Labs on January 26, 1954, by Morris Tanenbaum . The first production commercial silicon transistor

11760-467: The years preceding World War II, infrared detection and communications devices prompted research into lead-sulfide and lead-selenide materials. These devices were used for detecting ships and aircraft, for infrared rangefinders, and for voice communication systems. The point-contact crystal detector became vital for microwave radio systems since available vacuum tube devices could not serve as detectors above about 4000 MHz; advanced radar systems relied on

11872-525: Was a few ten-thousandths of an inch thick. Indium electroplated into the depressions formed the collector and emitter. AT&T first used transistors in telecommunications equipment in the No. 4A Toll Crossbar Switching System in 1953, for selecting trunk circuits from routing information encoded on translator cards. Its predecessor, the Western Electric No. 3A phototransistor , read

11984-486: Was announced by Texas Instruments in May 1954. This was the work of Gordon Teal , an expert in growing crystals of high purity, who had previously worked at Bell Labs. The basic principle of the field-effect transistor (FET) was first proposed by physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld when he filed a patent for a device similar to MESFET in 1926, and for an insulated-gate field-effect transistor in 1928. The FET concept

12096-521: Was developed by Chrysler and Philco corporations and was announced in the April 28, 1955, edition of The Wall Street Journal . Chrysler made the Mopar model 914HR available as an option starting in fall 1955 for its new line of 1956 Chrysler and Imperial cars, which reached dealership showrooms on October 21, 1955. The Sony TR-63, released in 1957, was the first mass-produced transistor radio, leading to

12208-918: Was independently invented by physicists Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker while working at the Compagnie des Freins et Signaux Westinghouse , a Westinghouse subsidiary in Paris . Mataré had previous experience in developing crystal rectifiers from silicon and germanium in the German radar effort during World War II . With this knowledge, he began researching the phenomenon of "interference" in 1947. By June 1948, witnessing currents flowing through point-contacts, he produced consistent results using samples of germanium produced by Welker, similar to what Bardeen and Brattain had accomplished earlier in December 1947. Realizing that Bell Labs' scientists had already invented

12320-455: Was later also theorized by engineer Oskar Heil in the 1930s and by William Shockley in the 1940s. In 1945 JFET was patented by Heinrich Welker . Following Shockley's theoretical treatment on JFET in 1952, a working practical JFET was made in 1953 by George C. Dacey and Ian M. Ross . In 1948, Bardeen and Brattain patented the progenitor of MOSFET at Bell Labs, an insulated-gate FET (IGFET) with an inversion layer. Bardeen's patent, and

12432-521: Was made by Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze in 1967. In 1967, Bell Labs researchers Robert Kerwin, Donald Klein and John Sarace developed the self-aligned gate (silicon-gate) MOS transistor, which Fairchild Semiconductor researchers Federico Faggin and Tom Klein used to develop the first silicon-gate MOS integrated circuit . A double-gate MOSFET was first demonstrated in 1984 by Electrotechnical Laboratory researchers Toshihiro Sekigawa and Yutaka Hayashi. The FinFET (fin field-effect transistor),

12544-637: Was sometimes poor. This was later explained by John Bardeen as due to the extreme "structure sensitive" behavior of semiconductors, whose properties change dramatically based on tiny amounts of impurities. Commercially pure materials of the 1920s containing varying proportions of trace contaminants produced differing experimental results. This spurred the development of improved material refining techniques, culminating in modern semiconductor refineries producing materials with parts-per-trillion purity. Devices using semiconductors were at first constructed based on empirical knowledge before semiconductor theory provided

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