Bringing Silicon to the Valley

A Special Distinguished Lecture Presentation by

Professor Hans J. Queisser
Max-Planck Institute, Stuttgart, Germany

Tuesday, December 11, 2001

ABSTRACT
Silicon was a much more unruly material than germanium; its p - n junctions violated the ideal rectifier equation. Yet, this deficiency qualified Si for a bistable switching diode. William Shockley wanted to get rich with such diodes, and he started his laboratory in an old apricot barn on 391 South San Antonio Road in Mountain View. The diode venture failed, but Silicon Valley was born. Much initial help came from the large research laboratories on the US East Coast. Silicon has many extremely useful properties, is today by far the most important semiconductor and will most probably remain so, in spite of several competitors. We live in the "Silicon Age" with characteristic consequences, never before experienced in other eras of human civilization.

SHORT BIO
Hans Queisser is a retired director of the Max-Planck-Institute for Solids in Stuttgart. He obtained his Ph.D. in physics at Goettingen in 1958, then joined Shockley Transistor Corporation in Mountain View, where he worked on crystal growth, epitaxy, diffusion, lattice defects, junction properties and solar cells. From 1964 to 1966, he did research on GaAs optoelectronics at Bell Labs. After a professorship at Frankfurt, he was asked to be a founding director of the new Max-Planck- Institute for Solids. He was president of the German Physical Society, adviser to the German Federal government and the World Bank. He serves on several industrial boards, including Robert Bosch Inc., Hewlett-Packard and Scientific American. He is presently a visiting professor at U.C. Berkeley.

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