1931The Teory Of Electronic Semi-Conductors is Published.docxVIP

1931 - The Theory Of Electronic Semi-Conductors is Published Alan Wilson uses quantum mechanics to explain basic semiconductor properties. Seven years later Boris Davydov (USSR), Nevill Mott (UK), and Walter Schottky (Germany) independently explain rectification. A. H. Wilson (later honored as Sir Alan Wilson) in his Cambridge days Courtesy of The Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge Translated into English as semiconductor, the German word halbleiter was first used in 1911 to describe materials with electrical conductivities between those of metals (conductors) and insulators. But a good explanation of semiconductor behavior eluded scientists for decades. As late as 1931, physicist Wolfgang Pauli opined that one shouldn’t work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether any semiconductors exist. While working at Werner Heisenberg’s institute in Leipzig, Germany that year, Cambridge University physicist Alan Wilson adapted the quantum theory of solids being developed there by Felix Bloch and Rudolf Peierls to create a model of semiconductor behavior. In two papers titled The Theory of Electronic Semi-Conductors, he proposed that their peculiar properties were due to the presence of impurity atoms in otherwise pure crystals of these materials. In 1932 Wilson also tried to explain the one-way current flow in a point-contact rectifier ( HYPERLINK /semiconductor/timeline/1874-semiconductor.html \o 1874 :: Semiconductor Point-Contact Rectifier Effect is Discovered 1874 Milestone) as due to quantum-mechanical tunneling from metal to semiconductor - or vice-versa. But along with similar attempts from other scientists in the early 1930s, his explanation eventually proved wrong. Satisfactory explanations of rectification finally emerged in 1938. Boris Davydov at the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Leningrad, Nevill Mott at Bristol University, England, and Walter Schottky at Siemens and Halske in Munich, Ger