Carl Frosch was a Bell Labs

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

 researcher who discovered that silicon

Silicon

Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...

 could be protectively coated with silicon dioxide

Silicon dioxide

The chemical compound silicon dioxide, also known as silica , is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula '. It has been known for its hardness since antiquity...

 by the right exposure to oxygen

Oxygen

Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...

 when hot. Such protective coating overcame a problem of surface states found in active silicon circuit elements. The discovery also revealed the potential for the process of silicon etching

Wet etching

Wet etching may refer to:*Industrial etching*Etching...

.

This discovery process was akin to that of penicillin

Penicillin

Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. They include penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V....

in that an accidental event led to
the discovery of the solution to a major problem.

External links

• Silicon Burns A description of the discovery from the point of view of a colleague at Bell Labs.