William Gardner pan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William "Bill" Gardner Pfann (born October 27, 1917 in Brooklyn , New York ; † October 22, 1982 ) was an American materials scientist at Bell Laboratories , known for the development of the zone melting process , which is important for the production of high-purity, single-crystal semiconductors is.

Pfann was in the chemistry department at Bell Laboratories as early as 1935. He also attended evening school at Cooper Union College with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1940. He stayed with Bell Laboratories until he retired in 1982. He died a few weeks later.

After the war he worked with the group of William B. Shockley , including Walter Houser Brattain , at Bell Labs in the development of diodes and the first high-end transistors made from semiconductors (initially germanium). He made important contributions to the first transistor produced (called Type A ).

Pfann first developed the zone melting process for germanium in 1950/51. A germanium rod was pushed several times through a horizontally arranged row of induction coils, the impurities migrating through the rod with the melting zone. This enabled contamination levels of only up to a hundredth of a ppm and later 1 ppb to be achieved (an improvement by a factor of 1000 compared to before). Silicon, which had a higher melting point, could be treated with a variant of the process developed by Henry Theurer at Bell Labs from 1952 (float zone refining). This was done at the same time by Paul H. Keck and Marcel JE Golay at the US Army Signal Corps in Fort Monmouth and by R. Emeis in Eberhard Spenke's laboratory at Siemens in Pretzfeld .

Pfann held 65 patents, mostly in the area of ​​zone melting. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1974), was a Fellow of the Metallurgical Society and the American Society of Metals . In 1976 he and Theurer received the James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials from the American Physical Society . In 1968 he received the American Chemical Society's Creative Invention Award .

Fonts

  • Zone melting , Wiley 1958, 3rd edition, Krieger Publishing 1978
  • Principles of Zone Melting , Transactions of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, Volume 194, 1952, pp. 747-753
  • Zone Melting , Science, Volume 135, 1962, pp. 1101-1109

literature

  • Kenneth A. Jackson, Harry J. Leamy, Richard S. Wagner: Obituary in Physics Today , Volume 36, February 1983

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in MRS Bulletin (Material Research Society), Volume 7, No. 6, November / December 1982
  2. ↑ Method of Processing Semiconductive Materials, US Patent 3,060,123, filed 1952, issued 1962
  3. ↑ 1951 Development of Zone Refining, Computer History Museum
  4. ^ Keck, Golay Crystallization of Silicon from a Floating Liquid Zone , Physical Review, Volume 89, 1953, p. 1297
  5. ^ Emeis crucible-free pulling of silicon monocrystals , Zeitschrift für Naturforschung 9a, 1954, p. 67
  6. ^ McGroddy Price, APS
personal data
SURNAME Pfann, William Gardner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfann, Bill (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American materials scientist
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1982