PNNL

Jim De Yoreo, a materials scientist and Battelle Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is accustomed to discussing new research. But a recent assignment asked him to look back, not forward, to help chronicle one of the engineering achievements that launched the Information Age.

As chair of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Materials Section, De Yoreo helped select semiconductor engineering as the featured achievement for a special summer issue of NAE's publication The Bridge. Titled “Engineering the Materials That Enabled the Information Age,” the issue examines how engineering breakthroughs over the past 250 years have transformed society and improved lives around the world.

“Semiconductor engineering is the basis of everything that we refer to when we discuss tech today,” De Yoreo said. “It all depends completely on making chips. There would be no cell phones, computers, or AI without them. Without semiconductor devices, you wouldn’t even be able to scan your groceries at the store because there would be no scanner. None of those things or a multitude of other devices would exist without semiconductor engineering.”

De Yoreo brought together semiconductor experts Christine Wang, Supratik Guha, and Carolyn Duran, all members of the NAE whose experience spans semiconductor research, engineering, and manufacturing. De Yoreo contributed to the article’s historical section, helping trace the field from the invention of the first transistor to the billions of highly engineered transistors packed into modern chips.

The resulting article traces the evolution of semiconductor engineering and its extraordinary reach. Semiconductor materials have unique electrical properties that allow engineers to control electrical signals, making devices such as transistors, sensors, LEDs, and lasers possible.

In what looks homemade by today’s engineering standards, the first transistor was a remarkably simple device: a small piece of semiconductor material with contacts attached to its surface. Yet that humble invention launched an engineering revolution that ultimately made computers, smartphones, artificial intelligence, and countless other technologies possible.

“Talk about a humble beginning,” said De Yoreo. “It’s made of plastic and wire and a chunk of a crystal that someone grew with things soldered on to it. And yet it’s the start of the Information Age.”

Over the decades that followed, advances in materials science and engineering transformed the transistor from a centimeter-scale laboratory device into billions of reliable, increasingly powerful devices packed onto modern chips. The NAE article traces that transformation and examines the materials-engineering achievements that changed what is possible and continue to shape the world around us.

Today, roughly 900 trillion transistors are manufactured every second, amounting to more than 10 trillion transistors per person each year; a staggering figure that illustrates the scale of semiconductor manufacturing.

The NAE article looks ahead to a new generation of challenges. As traditional transistors approach fundamental physical limits, researchers are exploring new materials, three-dimensional device architectures, and emerging technologies while also seeking more reliable approaches to manufacturing.

For De Yoreo, helping tell that story offered a chance to step outside his usual focus on research-based papers and reflect on the material breakthroughs that made the Information Age possible. History, he says, offers a powerful reminder of what can happen when materials science and engineering turn fundamental challenges into technological breakthroughs.