Prof Hans Queisser

Hailed as one of the forefathers of Silicon Valley, his work in the valley has brought a whole new way of life for us.

Professor Hans Queisser has helped to shrink the microchip so much that, today, computers can fit into handbags and mobile phones can be hung round our necks.

But the German scientist, who returned home to help his country prosper from the new- found technology of the Valley, found himself on the hit list of the German Red Army.

Listen in as Professor Hans Quessier, founder of the prestigious Max-Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, talks to Zahara Lateef about the ups and downs of the Silicon Age.

Editor's Notes:
This is an edited transcript of the interview.
Text in italics indicates material not televised.

Professor Hans Queisser, welcome to In conversation. In your book, "The Conquest of the Microchip", you claimed that this is the age of silicon. So how long do you think this will last?

Oh, at least a few more dicenniums or maybe more into the middle of our present 21st century. Silicon is such a marvellous, such a unique material. We have so much of it and we can do so many things. It is really a new age, just like iron age, bronze age, stone age. I think it's now the silicon age.

So what do you think is the next most important material that will change our lives the way stone, iron, silicon have?

Possibly the biological materials. They are very difficult. They are not as uniform as silicon or iron are. If you look at our own body, see how complicated it is. But we're making great advancements in this field. Physics helps biology and medicine. So it's a speculation but I think we are at a much better control of use for humankind in the biomaterials. But that is still some way off.

The semiconductor industry has so far been focussing its energies on making the chips smaller and smaller. In fact what we have system on chip. Now what do you think would be the next
challenge for the industry, apart from just
say shrinking the chip size?

The shrinking of the chip size has really been the most important thing. The miniaturisation that you can go into the interior of a crystal and select a few and take a few items of silicon out, put a few in and make things much, much smaller. So the price of a transistor, which was $135 when I started in Silicon Valley, is so far down and we have mega chips, we have huge collection of integrated chips.

The next challenge for the industry maybe more of a economic age because the big new chip fabs are costing so much money that you really have to make alliances. We see this all over the globe right now and we have to, of course, find the markets like the personal computer. And with it, the internet has provided such an impetus for the industry and, maybe the next type of thing would be the digital assistance or maybe in medical applications. So the markets have to develop and with it, the new factories using bigger silicon with smaller integrated circuits. It's an exciting thing.

Now the next lap for the chip, are we headed
towards, say, one dimensionality?

We have that already to a certain extent. We have one dimensionality. We use quantum effects in optical devices, not so much in the standard silicon integrated say microprocesser or in memory chips but we have it with galium oxinide and related materials as the quantum wine laser. For example, the quantum dots laser. So we are really getting very close to the effects of the quantum character of nature. This is remarkable, I would never have believed it, but since you're getting so small, only a few atoms are involved, the quantum nature comes out very strongly and we utilise it. Wonderful!

The recent breakthrough, the manufacture of the world’s largest silicon wafer, 300 metres diameter. What does all this mean for consumers actually?

For the consumers it means that the prices for the basic electronic component will continue to go down. Just imagine, only 15 years ago, a computer was a major thing. Only big corporations could buy it and you remember the book "nineteen eighty- four" that people say big brother is here, government will only be the monopoly to watch you with computers, exactly the opposite has happened. Everybody can have the computer now, the personal computer. So it is in essence a very democratic technical development and I like that very much.

Where do you think we're headed?

It will continue. Certain crazes and fads come about. Look at stock market and Nasdaq and some of the people are willing to pay huge sums for the future developments. There is great hope and great expectations by the consumer who invests its money into electronics. It will have an impact on everyday life from medical assistance. Don't forget that the first transistor made by Germanium was not used for military purposes. It was for hearing aid, for heart pacemaker. So we'll have more of that, assistance for the human body, with blindness and things like that.

Modern astronomy is a very exciting field. Think of beautiful pictures that the Hubble Space telescope has brought down. Would it have been possible without silicon detectors and without silicon based computers. And so it will go. Also, automobiles. The exhaust control can only be done with cheap logic and sensors and actuators, which immediately react. Which we don't immediately see as that you have it in your car but with the California exhaust loss and the silicon technology, we know we now really have cleaner automobiles. The small problems, which were very, very bad in the late 50s. When I came to California, has really disappeared in that magnitude.

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