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November 1962 Radio-Electronics
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Electronics,
published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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This could be one of
those quizzes where common items are shown close-up so they do not look
familiar, and the reader's job is to figure out what he's seeing. The montage of
micrographs of antimony, cadmium sulfide, germanium etched in argon, and
germanium etched in hydrogen, appeared in a 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. All are elements / compounds currently (at the
time and now) being researched and used in semiconductors. Knowledge of
semiconductor physics has multiplied exponentially in the succeeding six decades
(hard to believe that much time has passed). The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory did
the work shown here.
Semiconductors Sit for Their Portraits
 These are microphotographs of semiconductor surfaces. Made in M.I.T.'s Lincoln
Laboratory by Harry H. Ehlers of the Electronics Materials Group, they are as useful
to metallurgists and solid state physicists as they are attractive. Magnification
of 200 times or more makes it possible to study many important phenomena in electronic
materials, including the presence and orientation of grain, identification of lattice
defects, noting the presence of precipitates, and others.
The photo to the top left is of a film of antimony 1,500 Angstroms thick.
At top right is on etched cadmium sulfide surface; at bottom left, a germanium
surface etched in argon at high temperatures, and at bottom right a germanium surface
etched in hydrogen.
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