Microelectronics

Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics that studies tiny complex machines or................... that allow most of our devices to function, such as our cellphones. A microprocessor is a microchip. It is crucial in the field of microelectronics with billions of transistors per square centimeter, amplifying, controlling, and generating electrical signals. These transistors function as on and off.................... that allow microelectronics to perform various Boolean operations by storing 1s and 0s. The Boolean operation or switching takes as little as 10 trillionths of a second. These transistors are tiny and unbelievably fast, allowing our modern devices to become smaller and faster in various applications.

Microelectronics has...................... the field of electronics and is rapidly transforming our lives and our world. The most fundamental building block of microelectronics, the transistor, was invented in 1947. John Bardeen Walter Brattain and William Shockley...................... the point-contact transistor to their co-workers at Bell Labs in New Jersey. The point-contact transistor is the first form of the transistor and was made from gold foil strips pressed into contact with a slab of Germanium on a plastic triangle. It is the size of a thumb which is much larger than the modern microscopic transistors.

Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley connected a microphone to one end of the unit and a loudspeaker on the other to test the amplification. The men took turns picking up the microphone and...................., “Hello.” “HELLO!” yelled the loudspeaker on the other end of the line. This moment is significant to microelectronics because it is followed by a technological revolution throughout the world. The progress in microelectronics has been focused on shrinking the circuitry embedded onto chips.

A decade later, Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit (IC), a small circuit containing electronic components, including transistors, resistors, capacitors, and other components. Kilby worked for Texas Instruments, a semiconductor....................., as an electrical engineer. Since each component had to be wired to any other component, he was irritated by the limited technical advancements. Because of the wires, the number of components used in devices was limited and sensitive to damage. Kilby constructed a circuit entirely out of semiconductors using Texas Instrument’s....................... of silicon transistors and semiconductors. Kilby’s final product, the integrated circuit, eliminated the need to wire each part individually. It was much smaller than any other previously devised circuit.

In 1965 Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel, published his observation regarding the future of microelectronics in the Electronics Magazine. Moore stated that the computing power of integrated circuits would increase exponentially along with the advancement of transistors over time, while the cost would decrease exponentially. The size of transistors shrank...................., and the number of transistors used in circuits grew rapidly. Moore’s observation drew a lot of attention and became known in the scientific world as Moore’s law. Moore’s law continues to be an accurate prediction of microelectronics’ future.

Intel developed and introduced their first microprocessor, the 4004, chip in 1971. Intel designed the 4004 microprocessors with 2,300 transistors, which resulted in as much processing power as the room-filling ENIAC. Intel.................... develops microprocessors with better processing powers that power most desktop computers to this day. The advancement of technology is at its peak, from phones to drones. Microelectronics plays a prominent role in humanity’s past and continuing progress in technology. Nanotechnology is expected to be the future of microelectronics, with far smaller..................... processing at much faster speeds.