Russell Shoemaker Ohl | |
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| Born | (1898-01-30)January 30, 1898 Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | March 20, 1987(1987-03-20) (aged 89) Vista, California, United States |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Engineering |
| Institutions | Bell Laboratories Pennsylvania State University |
Russell Shoemaker Ohl (January 30, 1898 – March 20, 1987) was an American scientist who is generally recognized forpatenting the modernsolar cell (U.S. patent 2,402,662, "Light sensitive device").[1]Ohl was a notablesemiconductor researcher prior to the invention of thetransistor.[1] He was also known as R.S. Ohl.
Russell Ohl's specialized area of research was into the behavior of certain types ofcrystals. He worked on materials research in the 1930s atAT&T'sBell Labs’ Holmdel facility, investigating diode detectors suitable forhigh-frequencywireless,broadcasting, andmilitaryradar. His work was only understood by a handful of scientists in the organization, one of whom was Dr.Walter Brattain (one of the trio who invented the germanium bipolar transistor in 1947, and who would be awarded theNobel Prize for Physics in 1956).
Ohl, in 1939, discovered the PN barrier (or as it became known, the “P–N junction”).[2][3] At the time hardly anyone knew anything about the impurities within these crystals, but Russell Ohl discovered the mechanism by which it worked. It was the impurities which made some sections moreresistant toelectrical flow than others, and thus it was the "barrier" between these areas of different purity that made the crystal work. Ohl later found that super-purifyinggermanium was the key to making repeatable and usable semiconductor material fordiodes. All diodes (incl. LEDs, laser diodes etc.) are descendants of Ohl's work. His work with diodes led him later to develop the first silicon solar cells.
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