Texas Instruments made the first grown-junction silicon transistors in 1954. The diffused silicon mesa transistor was developed at Bell Labs in 1955 and made commercially available by Fairchild Semiconductor in 1958.
These transistors were the first to have both diffused bases and diffused emitters. Unfortunately, like all earlier transistors, the edge of the collector–base junction was exposed, making it sensitive to contamination, thus requiring hermetic seals or passivation to prevent degradation of the transistor's characteristics over time.
Read more about this topic: Diffusion Transistor
Famous quotes containing the word mesa:
“This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)