Editing Semiconductor device (section)

===Improvements in transistor design===
Shockley was upset about the device being credited to Brattain and Bardeen, who he felt had built it "behind his back" to take the glory. Matters became worse when Bell Labs lawyers found that some of Shockley's own writings on the transistor were close enough to those of an earlier 1925 patent by [[Julius Edgar Lilienfeld]] that they thought it best that his name be left off the patent application.

Shockley was incensed, and decided to demonstrate who was the real brains of the operation.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} A few months later he invented an entirely new, considerably more robust,  [[bipolar junction transistor]] type of transistor with a layer or 'sandwich' structure, used for the vast majority of all transistors into the 1960s.

With the fragility problems solved, the remaining problem was purity. Making [[germanium]] of the required purity was proving to be a serious problem and limited the yield of transistors that actually worked from a given batch of material. Germanium's sensitivity to temperature also limited its usefulness. Scientists theorized that silicon would be easier to fabricate, but few investigated this possibility. Former Bell Labs scientist [[Gordon K. Teal]] was the first to develop a working silicon transistor at the nascent [[Texas Instruments]], giving it a technological edge. From the late 1950s, most transistors were silicon-based. Within a few years transistor-based products, most notably easily portable radios, were appearing on the market. "[[Zone melting]]", a technique using a band of molten material moving through the crystal, further increased crystal purity.