History of MOSFETs

[aargee]

Hi all,

I have a supply of older MOSFETs (BUZ series etc) and I think they are seriously inferior to modern designs, hyper static sensitive gates, etc
This has got me wondering if there is somewhere on the web that has a brief history of FET/Mosfet designs (Trench, HEXFET, etc)..
Sort of like a Readers Digest condensed version...

Really trying to decide if these devices are still valid for hobby use or not worth the effort but curious about the basic technology.

[T3sl4co1l]

Beats me...

With power devices, I think the basic progression is:
- Research; materials science improvements; first offering of small devices (e.g., 3N136?), targeted for small signal and RF amplifier applications
- Which were lateral devices (actually built the same way the cartoon diagrams show).  Scaled up, larger devices were used for audio and RF power amplification.  "Freedom from 2nd breakdown" (due to low power density -- an engineering bug rephrased as a marketing feature!).
- HexFETs (IR?), introduction of the first practical power switching devices (80s-90s?)
- Vertical technologies (V and Trench MOS, ca. 90s-00s)
- Advanced VDMOS, Superjunction (00s-10s), elimination of Rds(on)-Vdss^2 tradeoff

[aargee]

Thanks, that'll do for now. 

The Wikipedia article is not too bad either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET