Predictions of Gordon K. Teal in 1962

Respecting those who have gone on before and directed our steps, I am posting the predictions of Gordon Kidd Teal in 1962 for his anticipated progress in electronic crystalline materials in 2012 as published in the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IRE, May 1962, pp. 603-604.

The Role of Materials in the Electronics World of 2012 A.D.

GORDON K. TEAL - FELLOW IRE

I contend that the electronics world of 2012 A.D. could come to pass before 1972 if materials technology would permit. We can envisage clearly the contributions of electronics to the lives of our children living in 2012 A.D. They will be highly educated by electronic teaching machines; work in automated industries and offices; communicate by means of satellites instantaneously to any part of the solar system; live in homes with walls that provide cooling, heating and lighting; enjoy three-dimensional color stereophonic television and telephone; conduct all financial transactions using coded identification cards; voice opinions on national and local government policies by voting electronically from their homes; enjoy a long and healthful life through computer use which will provide diagnoses with minimum probability of error and will prescribe with maximum probability of cure; ride in quiet fuel cell powered vehicles; and have the contents of even the rarest books available within minutes at the neighborhood information service.

Once emancipated from the materials restraints, we will have developed technologies permitting tailor-making materials starting at the atomic level. Science will dominate several fields of materials which heretofore have been mainly technology. Ceramics engineering, for example, will embody the applications of advances in solid-state physics and chemistry of ceramics. Metallurgy too will continue its present strong science growth until most structural materials are designed by the scientist at his desk.

Single crystals of many exotic metals, alloys and compounds will be mass-produced. Of even more importance to the electronics industry, we will learn to deposit layers of extreme purity single or polycrystalline materials with thicknesses controlled to within a few angstroms. New thresholds of purity will be realized by the use of select enzymes to remove impurities. We shall see the use of ceramic materials as active electronic components and systems formed in integrated circuitry and operable at temperatures up to 2000°K. Insulators and conductors to meet the extremes of atmosphere and temperature for magnetohydrodynamic power generators will be a reality. Further understanding of materials and their s-rfaces will divulge the nature of catalytic phenomena. We will see semiconductors used extensively as catalysts to enhance chemical reactions. This development in the field of catalysis will promote in turn the use of fuel cells to provide power for industrial and home use, relegating to the past the power lines that mar the scenery of our cities and countryside.

Advances in cryogenics will make device operation at 4°K common. These devices, being in many forms, will operate in the superconducting state with infinitesimal power requirements and often with speeds 103 to 104 times those presently common. Cryotrons will evolve beyond the normal switching usage to become integrated logical and memory devices. The present active and passive circuit elements will be duplicated to function at near zero temperatures with attendant realization of drastically reduced noise levels and power requirements orders of magnitudes less than are presently feasible. Superconducting magnets with fields greater than 105 gauss and negligible power dissipation as well as power transformation without loss will be a reality.

During the next decade, and extending forward to the year 2012 A.D., significant advances in the area of thin films and surface phenomena will allow the materials scientist to control the bulk and surface of deposited films. Through this will evolve a new generation of transistor like devices, field emitters, and systems of integrated circuitry with high reliability and of low cost. Deposition techniques will become the dominant method for producing electronic materials as it will allow arbitrary control of the number, kind, concentration and concentration gradient of constituents. It is the nearest approach to working directly with materials in atomic amounts.
This new science of working with atoms might be aptly described as "atom engineering." It will permeate all fields of scientific endeavor and will govern the progress of the electronicist during the next 50 years. This technology will progress to the point where individual atoms, vacancies and defects will be selectively positioned in a device to function as circuit elements. Use of collective electron orbits and spins as memory storage units within a "match-box computer" will be a reality. Atom engineering will provide the solid-state analog of the vacuum tube and will also make possible elaborate tunneling devices and sophisticated systems. The advent of wafer-thin dynamic picture displays is just "around the corner," as is the all purpose ultrasensitive single crystal sensor.

I wish to point out that the specific role played by materials in the advances expected in electronics by 2012 A.D. is subtle, in fact so subtle that some may consider it to be trivial to the progress of electronics. The physics of the material is thought by some to be of singular importance. In such thought it is forgotten that the material possesses the wonderful properties we exploit, not the mathematics which describes these properties. To elucidate further, I point to the example of the p-n junction which triggered the major revolution occurring in electronics. While the elegant mathematics which describes the p-n junction is important, it is the materials technology that permits the formation of the junction which provides the many useful electronic devices we now use. Similarly, it will be our ability to understand and utilize materials, each with its own unique properties, which will be the foundation of electronics in 2012 A.D.

G. K. Teal is Assistant Vice President of Research and Engineering at Texas Instruments, Inc., Dallas, Tex. (Received December 19, 1961.)
===============================================================
Gordon Teal and John Little grew the first germanium and silicon single crystals at Bell Labs. Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit, called the process that they used to grow the bulk single crystals of germanium and silicon the "Teal Little Process" rather than the Czochralski process as many crystal growers refer to it today.