I still remember when I was in my first year studying electrical engineering at the university, I was working on building a simple circuit from the little knowledge that I had at that time, using the basic components such as resistors, switches, batteries, and lamps.
Along the process of my circuit building, I thought to myself, wouldn't it be nice if there were a component that lets current pass in one direction and blocks it from the other?
At that time, I thought I was being a smart kid who just posed a very clever question that could change engineering forever. And at that very moment, my naivety was instantly shattered when I found out about the existence of diodes.
It exists. The 'magical' component that I wanted in order to realize the outcome for my circuit actually existed, not to mention it being invented more than a century before I came into being.
I was completely awestruck, and I was filled with excitement at the same time. I kept asking, how does this 'magic' work? From a background that only knew either complete conductivity or complete insulation, the working of a diode was a complete mystery—and I will say this word again—seemingly magical.
And so I thought, is this component the building block of today's wonderful technology? From the basic calculators to the most powerful computers and artificial intelligence, from automation to the most sophisticated military weapons the world has ever seen, is this component what's running it all?
As I learned deeper as an engineering student, I found out that the answer to that question was not an absolute 'yes'. Diodes were not the only ones. The diode was just one. It was only one of the products of a material that also gave birth to unarguably the most important discovery in technology, the transistor.
And that material—the bloodline of modern technology—is the semiconductor.
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