History of Silicon in Timeline

By Popular Timelines Editorial Team · Updated: March 28, 2025

Silicon (Si), element 14, is a hard, brittle, blue-grey, tetravalent non-metal and semiconductor crucial in various applications. Its relatively unreactive nature, significant band gap, expansive optical transmission range and effective anti-reflection coating makes it the predominant semiconductor material in electrical devices, including transistors, solar cells, and integrated circuits. Silicon is also important in physiological and metabolic processes in plants.

1901: Bose's Radio Crystal Detector

In 1901, Indian physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose developed a radio crystal detector using galena.

1906: Pickard's Silicon Semiconductor Device

In 1906, American engineer Greenleaf Whittier Pickard developed the first silicon semiconductor device, a silicon radio crystal detector.

1940: Discovery of p-n junction and photovoltaic effects

In 1940, Russell Ohl discovered the p–n junction and photovoltaic effects in silicon.

1941: Development of high-purity germanium and silicon crystals

In 1941, techniques were developed for producing high-purity germanium and silicon crystals for radar microwave detector crystals during World War II.

1947: Shockley's Field-Effect Amplifier Theory

In 1947, physicist William Shockley theorized a field-effect amplifier made from germanium and silicon, but he failed to build a working device.

1954: Fabrication of the first silicon junction transistor

In 1954, physical chemist Morris Tanenbaum fabricated the first silicon junction transistor at Bell Labs.

1955: Discovery of Silicon Dioxide Growth

In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick at Bell Labs accidentally discovered that silicon dioxide (SiO2) could be grown on silicon.

1957: First manufactured SiO2 semiconductor oxide transistor

By 1957, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick published their work on the first manufactured SiO2 semiconductor oxide transistor, representing the first planar transistors.