Carl frog

This article is about the chemist Carl Frosch. For the copper engraver of the same name, see Carl Frosch (copper engraver) .

Carl John Frosch (born September 6, 1908 - May 18, 1984 ) was an American chemist who invented the silicon dioxide masking of silicon semiconductors at Bell Laboratories in 1955 with his technician Lincoln J. Derick (called Link Derick) , an important part of planar technology for the production of integrated circuits (see also thermal oxidation of silicon ).

Life

Frosch came from Ilion, New York and studied at Union College , where he became a Sigma-Xi member in 1929 .

Frosch worked as a process chemist in John Lewis Moll's group on the diffusion of impurities in semiconductors. The discovery of the importance of oxide masking in silicon first came about through a laboratory accident . At that time, working with silicon under oxygen was avoided (and experimented instead under hydrogen gas or vacuum conditions), as it was feared that it would simply burn . Frosch and Derick realized that the oxide layer not only protected the sensitive silicon, but also selectively allowed some dopants to pass through (such as gallium ) and not others (such as boron , phosphorus ). The silicon wafers could thus be selectively doped. They disseminated their discovery in June 1955 in a memorandum in Bell Labs.

Frosch and Derick also showed how one could dop the underlying silicon with minority charge carriers through narrow holes in the oxide layer. In 1957 Frosch and Derick published their discovery Various improvements were soon made by Jean Hoerni , among other things he recognized the importance that the oxide layer could protect the sensitive pn junction if the doping layer spread laterally under the oxide cover. Hoerni was at Fairchild Semiconductor and received the memorandum from Frosch and Derick on scientists at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory (a preprint of Frosch and Derick's article was circulated by Shockley in December 1956).

Most recently he lived in Summit , New Jersey. His son Peter Frosch (1937-2011) was a chemistry professor at Berkeley and Union College. Frog is buried in Briggs Cemetery in Ballston Spa, Saratoga County, New York.

Web links

• Holonyak, The origins of diffused silicon technology at Bell Labs 1954-55, pdf , with photo by Frosch and Derick
• Mark Burgess, Diffusion Technologies at Bell Laboratories

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data according to Find a Grave , according to address book, Summit, New Jersey , he last lived in Summit, New Jersey with his wife Ruth
2. ↑ 1955 Development of Oxide Masking , Computer History Museum
3. ↑ Schenectady Gazette, March 2, 1929, pdf
4. ↑ Union College Magazine ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Memory of Mason Clark Silicon burns!
6. ↑ Patent US2802760 : Oxidation of semiconductor surfaces for controlled diffusion. Registered December 2, 1956 , published August 13, 1957 , inventors: Lincoln Derick, Carl Frosch. ‌
7. ^ CJ Frosch, L. Derick: Surface Protection and Selective Masking during Diffusion in Silicon. In: Journal of the Electrochemical Society. Volume 104, No. 9, 1957, pp. 547-552, doi: 10.1149 / 1.2428650 .
8. ↑ Frosch and Derick initially attempted to remove the oxide layer for masking as a contamination with acid. Christophe Lécuyer, David Brock: Makers of the Microchip. MIT Press, p. 63.
9. ↑ Bachelor's degree from Union College in 1959, studied at Caltech and PhD from the University of Chicago.
10. ↑ Obituary by Peter Frosch ( Memento of the original dated February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .