Formation of a gate dielectric of nanometer thickness by rapid thermal treatment

Investigations of the thickness and optical characteristics of thin SiO2 films obtained by one-, two-, or three-stage rapid thermal processing (RTP) at atmospheric pressure, pulses of 6, 12, and 20 s duration have been carried out. To obtain thin SiO2 films by the RTP method, N-type:Ph 4.5 Оhm/□ (100) silicon wafers were used as initial samples. The samples were preliminarily oxidized at 1000 °C of the obtained wet oxygen (SiO2 d = 100 nm), then the silicon oxide was completely removed in a solution of hydrofluoric acid, after which the wafers were subjected to chemical cleaning using the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) technology. Oxidation in a stationary oxygen atmosphere was carried out in one or two stages by heating the plates with a light pulse of different power up to maximum temperatures of 1035 – 1250 °C, as well as a three-stage process, where the final stage was annealing in a nitrogen atmosphere or in a forming gas (N2 97% + H2 3%). The characteristics of SiO2-Si barrier structures nitrided in N2, obtained by the RTP process by light fluxes with pulses of a second duration, were studied to improve the electrophysical parameters of gate oxides by the RTP method. It is of interest for integrated circuits (ICS) with a high density of the active regions of devices.

Epilogue

This epilogue summarizes C. Francis Jenkins' pioneering ideas that have all come to fruition, a testament that he was a man with a vision. Jenkins dreamed of uniting television and motion pictures with his patents and inventions. He saw the potential of television and film as educational and entertaining tools, a visual art of communication with the capability of unifying people and nations. He envisioned cities and individuals being connected by multiple systems and services, as well as television surpassing radio's success in terms of audience. This epilogue also asks speculative and rhetorical questions of alternative history related to Jenkins and his work, for example, what would happen if: Jenkins had been given a stronger management role in the Jenkins Television Corporation and the overall De Forest organization; the Great Depression had not occurred; or the Radio Corporation of America had followed Jenkins' electro-optical scanning theories instead of burying them in favor of Vladmir Zworykin's electronics.

Tinkering with Cultural Memory

In 2015, analog synthesizers are resurgent in popular appeal. Robert Moog is often celebrated as the central and originary figure who launched a so-called revolution in sound by making synthesizers widely available in the late 1960s and early '70s. This essay examines the figure of the humble tinkerer, as exemplified by Moog, along with other historically specific and archetypal forms of masculinity that are embodied by the male subjects at the center of electronic music's historical accounts. Critical readings of audio-technical discourse, and of the periodization of synthesizer histories, reveal that women are always already rendered out of place as subjects and agents of electronic music history and culture. Yet a set of letters, written by young women across the United States to Harry F. Olson at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in the mid-1950s and analyzed in this article, demonstrates that women were an enthusiastic audience for the RCA synthesizer a decade before Moog built his prototypes. As they did with new media, including wireless radio and the phonograph, in the early twentieth century, women played a key role at midcentury in enabling the broad-based market for analog synthesizers that greeted Moog and others in the 1960s once these instruments were made available for widespread use.

Chicago – Arcetri 1933

On the evening of October 2, 1933 a most unusual event took place during the Century of Progress World Exposition in Chicago. To celebrate the visit of the renowned scientist Guglielmo Marconi and, by extension, the achievements of science in Italy, that night the lights of the fair were switched on using light emitted by the moon. This feat was realized thanks to the cooperation between the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the Astronomical Observatory of Arcetri, and the Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR). Its purpose was to illustrate – by means of the towering figures of Galileo and Marconi – the past and present greatness of Italian science.

The Quest for “Magnalux”

In September 1951, Radio Corporation of America chairman David Sarnoff celebrated his 45th year in the electronics industry by publicly challenging his research staff to develop three new technologies in time for his golden anniversary dinner 5 years later. This article considers the fate of one of these items, the “Magnalux” light amplifier, to explore how scientists, manufacturing personnel, and managers viewed the significance of fundamental research to technological innovation. Following a discussion of the content and context of Sarnoff’s request, the article focuses on the creation of two prototype light amplifiers to emphasize the contingency of technological success and failure and the centrality of commercial considerations in defining those categories. This case study reaffirms the value of historical methodologies to the social study of corporate science.

Making Silicon Valley: Engineering Culture, Innovation, and Industrial Growth, 1930–1970

The electronics manufacturing complex on the San Francisco Peninsula underwent enormous changes from the early 1930s to the late 1970s. Electronics firms in the area employed a few hundred machinists and even fewer engineers in the early 1930s. In the larger scheme of the entire American radio industry, they were marginal. They operated in the shadow of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the other large eastern firms that had a virtual monopoly on the production and sale of electronic components and systems. Forty years later the Peninsula had become a major industrial center specializing in electronic components.