Technological foundations and future directions of large-scale integrated electronics

The technological base of the electronics industry has undergone dramatic change in the past 20 years, largely related to the expansion of the use of materials technology. With the invention of the transistor in 1948, semiconductor materials processing provided the technology for an entirely new class of electronic devices. The invention of the monolithic integrated circuit in 1958 extended the use of materials technology to the formation of complete circuit functions on chips of semiconductor. We are now entering another phase of the expansion of materials technology, in which complete equipment components will be processed on slices of semiconductor.