Carl Frosch

Carl John Frog ( * September 6, 1908; † September 8, 1984 ) was an American chemist who invented at Bell Laboratories in 1955 with his technicians Lincoln J. Derick ( called Link Derick ), the silicon dioxide mask of silicon semiconductors, is an important part of the planar technology of manufacturing integrated circuits (see also, thermal oxidation of silicon).

Frog came from Ilion (New York) and studied at Union College, where in 1929 he Sigma Xi member was.

Frog worked as a process chemist in the group of John Lewis Moll diffusion of impurities in semiconductors. The discovery of the importance of the oxide mask with silicon initially done by a laboratory accident. At that time they avoided working with silicon under oxygen ( and experimented instead with hydrogen gas or vacuum conditions ), as it was feared it would just burn. Frog and Derick realized that the oxide layer not only protected the sensitive silicon, but also some selective doping substances leaked ( such as gallium ), others do not ( such as boron, phosphorus). The silicon wafer could be selectively doped. Their discovery they spread in June 1955 in a memorandum at Bell Labs.

Frog and Derick also showed how you could dope the underlying silicon with minority carriers through small holes in the oxide layer. 1957 Frog and Derick published their discovery Various improvements were soon carried out by Jean Hoerni, among other things, he also recognized the importance that the oxide layer could protect the sensitive pn junction when the doping layer laterally spreading under the oxide cap. Hoerni was at Fairchild Semiconductor and got the memorandum of frog and Derick on scholars at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory ( a preprint of an article by Frosch and Derick left Shockley in December 1956 in his company to circulate ).

Most recently, he lived in Summit, New Jersey. His son Peter Frosch (1937-2011) was a professor of chemistry at Berkeley and at Union College. Frog is on the Briggs Cemetery, Ballston Spa, Saratoga County ( New York), buried.