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Planar technology made integrated circuits practical to manufacture: Jean Hoerni used a protective silicon-dioxide layer to control the transistor surface, and Robert Noyce saw that patterned metal connections could be built on top of that insulating layer. At Fairchild Semiconductor, the process helped turn the integrated circuit from a promising idea into a production technology—and the company’s conflicts and departures seeded a network of new firms known as the Fairchildren, including the path that led to Intel.
Why did integrated circuits need a new way to connect transistors?
As engineers put more transistors into a circuit, connecting them became a growing burden. Malcolm Penn’s 2022 history gives a sense of the problem: a simple four-transistor flip-flop needed about 10 wires; eight transistors required about 25; and 16 required roughly 60 to 70. The connections multiplied faster than the transistor count, taking up space and requiring labor-intensive hand soldering.
| Transistors in the example | Approximate wires required |
|---|---|
| 4 | 10 |
| 8 | 25 |
| 16 | 60–70 |
The challenge was therefore not simply to make smaller transistors. A useful integrated circuit needed a way to place devices together and connect them without relying on a tangle of separate wires.
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Protecting and shaping the transistor surface
In 1958, Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby demonstrated two transistors integrated on a semiconductor substrate, but they were connected by wire bonds. At Fairchild, physicist Jean Hoerni addressed a different obstacle: contamination and instability at the silicon surface. He developed a process that covered the surface with silicon dioxide (SiO₂), a protective insulating layer called a passivation layer.
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With the surface protected, manufacturers could selectively diffuse material into the silicon to form the transistor’s emitter and base regions. The resulting structure was flatter and more controlled, making production easier to automate. Hoerni’s planar process was announced in January 1959.
Noyce turns the insulating layer into a wiring platform
Robert Noyce recognized that the silicon-dioxide layer could do more than protect the transistor: because it was an insulator, conducting paths could be patterned over it without shorting against the silicon underneath. In effect, the chip could carry its own interconnections, much as a printed-circuit board carries conductive traces. This addressed the wiring bottleneck that had made larger circuits awkward to assemble.
Hoerni’s process and Noyce’s interconnection idea were complementary. The first controlled and protected the transistor surface; the second used that surface structure to connect devices as part of the chip. Penn described planar technology as the second most important invention in microelectronics after the transistor, a judgment that should be understood as his assessment rather than a measured ranking.
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How did Kilby and Noyce’s integrated-circuit work relate?
Kilby’s 1958 demonstration and Noyce’s later proposal were distinct contributions to the integrated circuit. Kilby showed that multiple devices could be formed on one semiconductor substrate, though his demonstration used wire-bonded connections. Noyce filed his patent in April 1959, claiming an approach that used patterned conductors over an insulating layer to make connections.
Texas Instruments argued that Kilby’s earlier patent language already covered Noyce’s claims. Both patents were ultimately declared valid, and the companies reached a cross-licensing agreement. Kilby later said he and Noyce had jointly invented the integrated circuit, even though Texas Instruments management took a different position.
When did Fairchild make its first working planar integrated circuit?
From process development to a usable logic family
Making isolated transistors work together on a planar chip took about 18 months of development. Fairchild produced its first working isolated integrated-circuit device on September 27, 1960. In March 1961, the company announced a direct-coupled transistor-logic family based on a planar resistor-transistor-logic process developed by Hoerni and Jay Last.
One device in that family, the µL903 three-input NOR gate, became a basic building block of the Apollo guidance computer. The lunar guidance computer, designed by MIT and built by Raytheon, used 5,000 devices, according to Penn’s 2022 account. That application showed how the ability to manufacture many connected components on chips could serve a demanding system beyond laboratory demonstrations.
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The first spinouts
Fairchild Semiconductor’s founding entrepreneurs initially held shares in the company. In 1959, Sherman Fairchild bought those shares, turning the founders into employees and weakening the founding team’s cohesion. As the company pursued integrated circuits, marketing executive Tom Bay challenged the project’s spending. Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce did not decisively back Jay Last in the dispute.
Hoerni and Last left Fairchild on January 31, 1961, and formed Amelco in Mountain View. Arthur Rock arranged financing from Teledyne; Eugene Kleiner and Sheldon Roberts joined the new company shortly afterward. Their departure began a succession of companies formed by former Fairchild employees—the “Fairchildren.”
Signetics, another Fairchild spinout, followed in 1961 and introduced its SE100 diode-transistor-logic family in 1962. Amelco later disappeared through mergers and rebrandings, while its intellectual-property portfolio survives under Microchip, according to Penn’s continuation of the history.
How the Fairchild network led to Intel
Moore and Noyce left Fairchild in March 1968. They formed NM Electronics that summer, then acquired the naming rights from hotel chain Intelco about a year later. The new name was Intel. This was not a single straight-line corporate succession: the Fairchildren were a wider network of spinouts and later ventures, with Intel among the most consequential companies founded by people who had worked at Fairchild.
Venture capital also became part of Silicon Valley’s institutional story. Arthur Rock and Hayden Stone may be credited with establishing an early venture-capital firm, in Penn’s account, while Kleiner Perkins became the first investor with a physical office in Silicon Valley. Eugene Kleiner later partnered with Thomas Perkins, then head of Hewlett-Packard’s research and development, to form Kleiner Perkins; its office on Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto became a landmark in the region’s venture-capital culture.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How did packaging and offshore assembly help scale chip production?
The dual-in-line package made chips easier to handle
As integrated circuits became products that had to be mounted and connected reliably, packaging mattered alongside chip design. Fairchild engineers Don Forbes, Rex Rice, and Bryant “Buck” Rogers developed the dual-in-line package in 1964; Fairchild launched it in 1965. It arranged pins in two parallel rows, with 0.1-inch (2.54 mm) spacing between pins and 0.3-inch (7.62 mm) spacing between rows.
Texas Instruments introduced a less expensive plastic-resin version, helping drive adoption. Later versions supported as many as 64 pins. Surface-mount packages eventually displaced dual-in-line packages in many uses by the late 2000s.
Moving assembly and test closer to lower-cost labor
As wafers carried as many as 15,000 die, assembly labor became a larger manufacturing cost. Fairchild opened an assembly-and-test operation in a former shoe factory in Kowloon, Hong Kong, in 1963—the first such operation in the Far East, according to Penn. Companies were drawn to locations such as Hong Kong and, later, Malaysia by lower labor costs, non-unionized facilities, technical staff, engineering schools, and tax incentives.
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Planar processing solved a manufacturing problem and opened a path to more complex circuits: protected surfaces could be processed more consistently, while patterned conductors allowed multiple devices to be connected on the chip. Fairchild’s work helped demonstrate that this approach could support real products, from logic components used in the Apollo guidance computer to standardized packages and large-scale manufacturing. The departures that followed Fairchild’s internal conflicts carried its people and expertise into new companies, helping establish the startup and venture-capital network associated with Silicon Valley.
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