The history of electronics is a story of the twentieth

century and three key components—the vacuum

tube, the transistor, and the integrated circuit. In
1883, Thomas Alva Edison discovered that
electrons will flow from one metal conductor to
another through a vacuum.
This discovery of conduction became known as the
Edison effect. In 1904, John Fleming applied the
Edison effect in inventing a two-element electron
tube called a diode, and Lee De Forest followed in
1906 with the three-element tube, the triode. These
vacuum tubes were the devices that made
manipulation of electrical energy possible so it
could be amplified and transmitted.
The first applications of electron tubes were in radio
communications. Guglielmo Marconi pioneered the
development of the wireless telegraph in 1896 and
long-distance radio communication in 1901. Early
radio consisted of either radio telegraphy (the
transmission of Morse code signals) or radio
telephony (voice messages)
 Both relied on the triode and made rapid advances
thanks to armed forces communications during World
War I. Early radio transmitters, telephones, and
telegraph used high-voltage sparks to make waves and
sound. Vacuum tubes strengthened weak audio signals
and allowed these signals to be superimposed on radio
waves. In 1918, Edwin Armstrong invented the "super-
heterodyne receiver" that could select among radio
signals or stations and could receive distant signals.
Radio broadcasting grew astronomically in the 1920s as
a direct result. Armstrong also invented wide-band
frequency modulation (FM) in 1935; only AM or
amplitude modulation had been used from 1920 to
1935.
 Communications technology was able to make huge
advances before World War II as more specialized tubes
were made for many applications. Radio as the primary
form of education and entertainment was soon challenged
by television, which was invented in the 1920s but didn't
become widely available until 1947. Bell Laboratories
publicly unveiled the television in 1927, and its first
forms were electromechanical. When an electronic
system was proved superior, Bell Labs engineers
introduced the cathode ray picture tube and color
television. But Vladimir Zworykin, an engineer with the
Radio Corporation of America (RCA), is considered the
"father of the television" because of his inventions, the
picture tube and the iconoscope camera tube.
A vacuum tube is a hollow glass cylinder containing
a positive electrode and a negative electrode
between which is conducted in a full or partial
vacuum. A grid between these electrodes controls
the flow of electricity.
The hollow cylinder of a vacuum tube contains a
filament, typically tungsten coated with another
metal. When the filament is sufficiently heated by
an electric current, it emits electrons. This
filament, or electrode, which emits electrons is
known as a cathode and has a negative charge.
Because it has a negative charge, it attracts
electrons, thus nullifying the process. Therefore,
free electrons must be supplied to the cathode.
 This is usually done by connecting the cathode to
the negative terminal of a generator or battery.
The other electrode, known as an anode, has a
positive charge. The electrons move from the
cathode to the anode, resulting in a oneway current
within the tube.
 In 1884, Thomas Edison, while working on his
incandescent light bulb, inserted a metal plate
between glowing filaments. He observed that
electricity would flow from the positive side of the
filament to the plate, but not from the negative. He
did not understand why this was so and treated this
effect (now known as the Edison effect) as a
curiosity. Unwittingly, he had created the first
diode.
 Later, John Ambrose Fleming of England, one of
Edison's former assistants, became involved in
designing a radio transmitter for Guglielmo
Marconi. In 1904 Fleming realized that the diode
had the ability to convert alternating current (AC)
into direct current (DC), and incorporated it into his
very efficient radio wave detector. Fleming called
his device the thermionic valve because it used heat
to control the flow of electricity just as a valve
controls the flow of water. In the United States the
invention became known as a vacuum tube.
In Germany, Arthur Wehnelt, who also worked with
thermionic emission, had applied for a patent in
January 1904 for a tube that converted AC into DC.
However, he neglected to mention the use of the
device in radio wave detection and was unable to
sell his invention for that purpose after Fleming
applied for his own patent.
 Lee de Forest (1873-1961) improved on Fleming's
valve by adding a third element in 1906, thus
inventing the triode. This made an even better radio
wave detector but, like Edison, he did not realize the
full potential of his invention; his device, called an
audion, created an electrical current that could be
amplified considerably.
Despite its numerous advantages, the vacuum tube
had many drawbacks. It was extremely fragile, had
a limited life, was fairly large, and required a lot of
power to operate its heating element. The successor
to the vacuum tube, the transistor, invented by
Walter Houser Brattain, John Bardeen, and William
Shockley in 1948, had none of these drawbacks.
After 1960 the small, lightweight, low-voltage
transistors became commercially available and
replaced vacuum tubes in most applications, but
with the creation of microscopic vacuum tubes
(microtubes) in the 1990s, vacuum tubes are again
being used in electronic devices.
Review
What is COVALENT
BONDING?
 Recall that

• Atom consist of 3 basic particles

namely:
• Electron
• Proton
• Neutron
 Covalent bonding is a form of
chemical bonding that is characterized
by the sharing of pairs of electrons
between atoms, or between atoms and
other covalent bonds. In short,
attraction-to-repulsion stability that
forms between atoms when they share
electrons is known as covalent bonding.
 In the Lattice Structure
Neutrons and Protons form the
NUCLEUS
&
Electrons appear in fixed orbits
around the Nucleus
 Example for a silicon atom
Symbol: Si
Atomic Number: 14
Mass: 28.0855
Melting Point: 1410
Boiling Point: 2355
Number of Protons/Electrons: 14
Number of Neutrons: 14
Classification: Metalloid
Crystal Structure: Cubic
Density: 2.329
Color: grey
Silicon atom
 Although the covalent bond will
result in a stronger bond between the
valence electrons and their parent
atom, it is still possible for the
valence electrons to absorb sufficient
kinetic energy from external natural
causes to break the covalent bond and
assume the “FREE” state.
 The term “FREE” is applied to any any
electron that has separated from the fixed
lattice structure and is very sensitive any
applied electric fields such as established by
voltage sources of any difference in
potential.

The external causes include effects such as

light energy in the form of photons and
thermal energy(heat) from the surrounding
medium.
 At room temperature, there
are approximately 1.5 x
10e10 free carriers in 1 cm3
of intrinsic silicon material,
that is 15 billion electrons in
a space smaller that a small
sugar cube.
 The term INTRINSIC is
applied to any semiconductor
material that has been
carefully refined to reduce the
number of impurities to a very
low level – essentially as pure
as can be made available
through modern technology
The free electrons in a material due
only to external causes are referred
to as intrinsic carriers.
INTRINSIC CARRIER
for the 3 commonly used semicon.
GaAs = 1.7 x 10e6 / cm3
Si = 1.5 x 10e10 / cm3
Ge = 2.5 x 10e13 / cm3