Electronics and Microelectronics

1. The intensive effort¹ of electronics to increase the reliability and performance³ of its products while reducing their size and cost ha$ led to the results that hardly anyone would have dared (3d. ocMejimK ch) to predict⁴.

The evolution of electronic technology is sometimes called a rev olution. True, there has been a real revolution: a quantitative⁵ change in technology has given rise to qualitative change in human capabilj. ties⁶. There appeared smaller and smaller electronic components per forming increasingly complex electronic functions at ever higher speeds

It all began with the development of the transistor.

Prior to⁷ the invention of the transistor in 1947, its function in an electronic circuit could be performed only by a vacuum tube.

The first transistors had no striking advantage in size over the small est tubes and they were more costly. The one great advantage the tran sistor had over the best vacuum tubes was exceedingly⁸ low power con sumption. Besides they promised greater reliability and longer life However, it took years to demonstrate other transistor advantages.

With the invention of the transistor all essential circuit functions could be carried out⁹ inside solid¹⁰ bodies. The goal³ of creating electronic cir cuits with entirely solid-state components had finally been realized¹².

However, early transistors were actually enormous on the scale¹ at which electronic events¹⁴ take place. They could respond¹⁵ at a rate^! of a few million times a second; this was fast enough to serve in radio and hearing-aid (cjiyxoBofi annapaT) circuits but far below¹⁷ the speed needed for high-speed computers or for microwave communication systems. Besides, the early transistors were slow.

The effort was to reduce the size of transistors so that they could operate at higher speeds. That gave rise to the whole technology d microelectronics.

A microelectronic technology has shrunk¹⁸ transistors and otltf* circuit elements to dimensions¹⁹ almost invisible to unaided eye (> HeBoopyaceHHbiii rjia3).

The point²⁰ of this extraordinary miniaturization is not so mud¹ to make circuits small perse (.nam. caMH no ce6e) as to make circuit capable of performing electronic functions at extremely high spee$

It is known that the speed of response depends primarily on the size of jansistor: the smaller the transistor, the faster it is.

¹ The performance benefit²¹ resulting from microelectronics stems²²

directly from the reduction of distances between circuit components. If a circuit is to operate a few billion times a second the conductors that tie the circuit together must be measured in fractions of an inch. The microelectronics technology makes close coupling²³ attainable²⁴.

During the past decade the performance of electronic systems in­creased manifold²⁵ by the use of ever larger numbers of components and they continue to evolve. Modern scientific and business comput­ers, electronic switching²⁶ systems contain more than a million com­ponents.

The problem of handling²⁷ many discrete electronic devices began to concern²⁸ the scientists as early as 1950. The overall²⁹ reliability of the electronic system is related to the number of individual components.

A more serious shortcoming³⁰ was that it was once the universal practice to manufacture³¹ each of the components separately and then assemble³² the complete device by wiring³³ the components together with metallic conductors. It was no good (3d. 3to He noMorJio): the more components and interactions, the less reliable the system.

What ultimately³⁴ provided the solution was the semiconductor integrated circuit, the concept³⁵ of which had begun to take shape a few years after the invention of the transistor. Roughly (npH6jm3H- TejibHo) between 1960 and 1963, a new circuit technology became a reality. It was microelectronics development that solved the problem.

The advent³⁶ of microelectronic circuits has not, for the most part, changed the nature of the basic functional units: microelectronic de­vices were still made up of transistors, resistors, capacitors, and similar components. The major difference is that all these elements and their uiterconnections are now fabricated³⁷ on a single substrate³⁸ in a sin- series of operations.

tions have been given over to circuit elements that perform best: tran- . sistors. Several kinds of microelectronic transistors have been devej . oped, and for each of them families of associated circuit elements a ■ d circuit patterns ⁴³ have evolved.

The bipolar transistor was invented in 1948 by John Bardeen Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley ofthe Bell Telephone Labo. ratories. In bipolar transistors charge carriers ofboth polarities are in. volved ⁴⁴ in their operation. They are also known as junction ⁴⁵ transis - tors. The npn and pnp transistors make up the class of devices calle,- junction transistors.

A second kind of transistor was actually conceived 46 almost 2* years before the bipolar devices, but its fabrication in quantity did n ■ become practical until the early 1960’s. This is field-effect transisto . The one that is common in microelectronics is the metal-oxide-sem. conductor ficld-effect transistor. The term refers ⁴⁷ to the three mate­rials employed in its construction and is abbreviated MOSFET (me - al-oride-semiconductor field-effect transistor).

The two basic types of transistor, bipolar and MOSFET, divide microelectronic circuits into two large families. Today the greatest den sity ofcircuit elements per. chip 48 can be achieved with the newer MOS­FET technology.

An individual integrated circuit ( 1C) on a chip now can embrac­ed. B^KmaTb) more electronic elements than most complex pieces o electronic equipment that could be built in 1950.

In the first 15 years since the inception (3d. noa^eHHe) of inte- - grated circuits, the number oftransistors that could be placed on a singl ' chip has doubled every year. The 1980 state of art⁴⁹ is about 70K densit) per chip. Nowadays we can put millions of transistors on a single cl-tlp

The fust generations ofthe commercially produced microelectronic devices are now refened to assmall-scale integrated circuits (SSI). The' included a few gates 5°. The circuitry defining 5* a logic array52 had tc be provided by external conductors.

Devices with more than about 1 0 gates on a chip but fewer thail about 200 are medium-scale integrated circuits (MSI). The upp^e(j boundary 53 of medium-scale integrated circuits technology is marked by chips that contain a complete arithmetic and logic unit (ALU). Th¹' unit accepts as inputs two operands and can perform any one of a doZ en -or so operations on them. The operations include addition, sub­traction, comparison, logical “and” and ‘‘or” and shifting ⁵⁵ one bit to _lhe left or right.

A large-scale integrated circuit (LSI) contains tens of thousands of elements, yet each element is so small that the complete circuit is _typic_ally less than a quarter of an inch on a side.

Integrated circuits are evolving from large-scale to very-large-scale (VLS 1) and wafer-scale integration (WS1).

The change in scale can be measured by counting the number of transistors that can b e fitted⁵⁶ onto a chip.

Continued evolution of the microcomputer will demand further inaeases in packing 5⁷ density.

There appeared a new mode ⁵⁸ of integrated circuits, microwave integrated circuits. In broadest sense 59, a microwave integrated circuit is any combination of circuit functions which are packed together with­out a user accessible 60 interface.

The evolution of microwave integrated circuits must begin with the development of plana^¹ transmission lines 62.

As ^{we m}oved into the 1970’s, stripline and microstrip assemblies became commonplace and accepted as the everyday method ofb_uild_- in^g microwave integrated circuits. N ew forms oftransmi^ion lines were °n ^{the h}orizon, however. In 1974 new integrated-circuit components ^{in a transm}ission line called fineline appeared. Other more exotic tech_­niq^ues, such as dielectric waveguide ⁶³ integrated circuits emerge 64. Ma_­jor eff°rt^{s c}unently are directcd at such areas as image guide, co_-pla_- ^narwaveguide, fineline and dielectric waveguide, all with emphasis _on te^chniques which can be applied to monolithic integrated circ_uit_s. These monolithic circuits encompass 65 all ofthe traditional microwave fun^ctions of analog circuits as well as new digital applications.

Mkroelectronic technique will continue to displace other mod_es. ^{the limit} of optical resolution 66 is now being reached, ne_w litho_­^graphi^{c and} fabrication techniques will be required. Circuit patterns ^have _^to be formed with radiation having wavelength shorter than

ilse ^ofli^ght, and fabrication techniques capable ofgreater definition ^wu1 be needed.

tro • ^Electronics has extended ⁶⁷ man’s intellectual power. Microelec- ^nics extends that power still further.

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