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Silicon’s band gap is almost twice as large as germanium’s, so it is far less sensitive to temperature and has a much higher maximum operating temperature. In 1952, Gordon Teal left Bell Labs to join Texas Instruments® (TI) with the goal of creating a silicon transistor. Unfortunately silicon’s melting point is also much higher than germanium’s, and it reacts more easily with oxygen and other contaminants. Creating pure crystal silicon was far more difficult, but as the man who had pioneered growing high-quality crystals at Bell Labs, Teal was probably better suited than any man in the world to overcome these problems.

Each new technology generation is planned to start when the previous generation can no longer be easily improved. The future of Moore’s law In recent years, the exponential increase with time of almost any aspect of the semiconductor industry has been referred to as Moore’s law. Indeed, things like microprocessor frequency, computer performance, the cost of a semiconductor fabrication plant, or the size of a microprocessor design team have all increased exponentially. No exponential trend can continue forever, and this simple fact has led to predictions of the end of Moore’s law for decades.

The lowest levels are produced with the smallest dimensions. This allows for a very large number of interconnections. The highest levels are produced with large widths, spaces, and thickness. This allows them to have much less delay at the cost of allowing fewer wires in the same area. The different wiring layers connect transistors on a chip the way roads connect houses in a city. The only interconnect layer that actually connects to a transistor is the first layer deposited, usually called the metal 1 or M1 layer.