| The Original Point-Contact Transistor The original point-contact transistor often behaved in true negative resistor fashion, but was never understood. The point-contact transistor was simply bypassed by advancing to other transistor types more easily manufactured and with less manufacturing variances. William B.
Burford III and H. Grey Verner, Semiconductor Junctions and Devices,
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1965, p. 281-291.
Quoting p. 281 on point-contact transistors: "…the
theory underlying their function is imperfectly understood even after
almost a century… although the very nature of these units limits them
to small power capabilities, the concept of small-signal behavior, in
the sense of the term when applied to junction devices, is meaningless,
since there is no region of operation wherein equilibrium or theoretical
performance is observed. Point-contact devices may therefore be described as sharply
nonlinear under all operating conditions." Our comment is that point-contact transistors can easily be
developed into true negative resistors enabling COP > 1.0 circuits. Excerpted from "On Extracting Electromagnetic Energy from the Vacuum," IC-2000, by Tom Bearden. |