The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 18, 1976
Filed:
Nov. 22, 1974
Seymour Merrin, Fairfield, CT (US);
Innotech Corporation, Norwalk, CT (US);
Abstract
The conductivity of a body of ionically impermeable glassy amorphous material is controllably altered by driving or diffusing suitable impurities into the body of material. Impurities are driven into the glassy body by, for example, disposing a source of impurity ions on the surface and applying an electric field across the body. Preferably, the glassy amorphous material is heated so that its temperature is above a thermal diffusion temperature characteristic of the particular material and the particular impurity but is below the temperature at which an appreciable proportion of the impurities would be structurally incorporated into the material. Alternatively, impurities can be driven into a glassy body by ion bombardment. And in some material-impurity combinations, it is sufficient merely to heat the material above the thermal diffusion temperature in the presence of the dopant. The method provided by the invention can be used to render insulating glassy materials effectively semiconducting or to alter the conductive properties of glassy semiconductors. It can thus be used to produce a wide variety of bulk semiconductor devices such as switches as well as single junction and multiple junction semiconductor devices.