This blog post explores how semiconductors and information and communication technology have led global change and become the core of a new economic revolution.
Over the past few decades, the world has undergone tremendous change, with the rapid advancement of information and communication technology at its core. Information scattered throughout the analog world was converted into the binary code of 0s and 1s and stored within a single transistor, a single chip, and a single machine.
Thanks to technological progress, free communication between machines became possible, ushering in an era where we can easily resolve most conveniences. Now, within this online world, this digital world, software-based service industries are rapidly growing amid explosive popularity and massive demand. What is the fundamental revolution driving this shift in people’s behaviors and industrial structures? It is the development of semiconductors and the birth of the semiconductor industry.
So, what exactly are the functions of semiconductors, and how do they store and manage information? A semiconductor literally means a material that is half conductor and half insulator (a material that does not conduct electricity). The crucial term ‘half’ here signifies that a semiconductor can act as either a conductor or an insulator depending on the situation. We can control the electrical properties of a semiconductor by altering external conditions such as light, heat, voltage, or current.
To explain this simply through analogy: even before the development of semiconductors, the theories of classical electromagnetism had already been perfectly established by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Humankind had no problem creating vessels (capacitors and coils) to contain electromagnetic energy, but lacked the technology to create and operate valves that connect these vessels and regulate the flow of energy between them. Simply put, a semiconductor is like a vessel equipped with a valve or a faucet.
Semiconductors come in a wide variety, and each type regulates the opening and closing of the valve through changes in voltage, light intensity, temperature, and other factors. Differences also arise based on the number of terminals through which current flows, in addition to the type of stimulus they respond to. I will introduce the two most basic semiconductor devices. A diode has one valve and two terminals. It can allow current flowing from one side to flow to the other, or completely block it, depending on voltage changes. A transistor has three terminals. It takes current flowing into one terminal and distributes it to the other two terminals in specific proportions based on voltage changes.
This briefly explains the functions of semiconductors. To summarize again, a semiconductor is a device capable of storing, transferring, and manipulating electromagnetic energy. So, what was the driving force behind the explosive growth of the electronics industry, including the semiconductor industry, after the development of semiconductor devices, leading to today’s IT revolution? It is none other than sand—often called “a gift from God” in the industry—an inexpensive material boasting the second-abundant quantity on the Earth’s surface. Sand is oxidized silicon, and silicon, a Group 4 element on the periodic table, provides the most excellent semiconductor functionality between conductors and insulators.
Thanks to this inexpensive and abundant material, research on semiconductor devices was conducted at Nokia Bell Labs. Following the development of the Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) there, active development of devices like the Field Effect Transistor (FET) progressed rapidly, primarily in the United States. In particular, the Integrated Circuit (IC), developed by Jack Kilby and Robert Norton Noyce, provided a major turning point and foundation for the electronics industry.
Despite not being a pure physics field, the development of the integrated circuit was so influential that it earned a Nobel Prize in Physics. An easy example to illustrate the power of the integrated circuit is the radio we made in school using soldering. This radio only required properly placing components on a board and soldering them to connect each to the board. This was possible because the board was already designed with paths for current to flow. Once designed, mass production becomes extremely inexpensive simply by repeatedly stamping that design onto boards.
What’s even more astonishing is that tens of thousands of transistors are now integrated onto a single chip as an integrated circuit, functioning correctly all at once. And this is achieved through a production method that is remarkably simple and inexpensive.
In Korea too, many semiconductor and electronics companies, including Samsung, LG, and Hynix, have achieved remarkable products, sales, and technological advancements over the past few decades. Globally, companies like Intel, Fairchild, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and countless electronics firms in Silicon Valley have transformed the world. By controlling the invisible flow of electrons, semiconductors have ushered in a new era and sparked an economic revolution. Could they not be the most powerful yet smallest force that has changed the world?
