🚀 go-pugleaf

Further to my comment about early investigations into field-effect
transistors, S.M. Sze [1] states the following in his introduction
to Ch. 8, "MOSFET":
..."The principle of the surface field-effect transistor was first
proposed in the early 1930s by Lilienfeld [2(my ref., not Sze's--mb)]
and Heil [3].  It was subsequently studied by Shockley and Pearson
[4] in the late 1940s."...

I have not read [2], [3], or [4] above, but remember reading a
description of [2] in some long-forgotten reference.  While the
details are very sketchy, I seem to remember that the substrate
material was a metal-oxide. (As you can see, I was off by quite
a few years in my recall of the time-frame.)

Any other takers?

References:
[1] S.M. Sze, _Physics_of_Semiconductor_Devices_, 2nd ed. (now at least
one edition out of date), Wiley, 1981.

[2] J.E. Lilienfeld, U.S. Patent 1 745 175, 1930.

[3] O. Heil, British Patent 439 457, 1935.

[4] W. Shockley and G.L. Pearson, "Modulation of Conductance of Thin
Films of Semiconductors by Surface Charges", _Phys._Rev._, Vol 74,
1948.

enjoy,
mike borza         <nusip@maccs.uucp or antel!mike@maccs.uucp>