Dawon Kahng was born on May 4, 1931, in Seoul, Korea. He studied Physics at Seoul National University in South Korea, and immigrated to the United States in 1955 to attend Ohio State University, where he received a doctorate in physics. was invented by Kahng with his colleague Mohamed Atalla at Bell Labs in 1959. He was a researcher at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and he invented MOSFET, which is the basic element in most of today's electronic equipment, with Mohamed Atalla in 1959. They fabricated both PMOS and NMOS devices with a 20µm process. Atalla in 1960, and then Kahng in 1961, proposed the concept of the MOS integrated circuit. They noted that the MOS transistor's ease of fabrication made it useful for integrated circuits. However, Bell Labs initially ignored MOS technology, as the company was not interested in integrated circuits at the time. Extending their work on MOS technology, Atalla and Kahng next did pioneering work on hot carrier devices, which used what would later be called a Schottky barrier. The Schottky diode, also known as the Schottky-barrier diode, was theorized for years, but was first practically realized as a result of the work of Atalla and Kahng during 19601961. They published their results in 1962 and called their device the "hot electron" triode structure with semiconductor-metal emitter. The Schottky diode went on to assume a prominent role in mixer applications. They later conducted further research on high-frequency Schottky diodes. In 1962, Atalla and Kahng proposed and demonstrated an early metal nanolayer-base transistor. This device has a metallic layer with nanometric thickness sandwiched between two semiconducting layers, with the metal forming the base and the semiconductors forming the emitter and collector. With its low resistance and short transit times in the thin metallic nanolayer base, the device was capable of high operation frequency compared to bipolar transistors. Their pioneering work involved depositing metal layers on top of single crystal semiconductor substrates, with the emitter being a crystalline semiconductor piece with a top or a blunt corner pressed against the metallic layer. They deposited goldthin films with a thickness of 10 nm on n-typegermanium, while the point contact was n-type silicon. Along with his colleague Simon Sze, he invented the floating-gate MOSFET, which they first reported in 1967. They also invented the floating-gate memory cell, the foundation for many forms of semiconductor memory devices. He invented floating-gate non-volatile memory in 1967, and proposed that the floating gate of an MOS semiconductor device could be used for the cell of a reprogrammable ROM, which became the basis for EPROM, EEPROM and flash memory technologies. He also conducted research on ferro-electric semiconductors and luminous materials, and made important contributions to the field of electroluminescence. After retiring from Bell Laboratories, he became the founding president of the NEC Research Institute in New Jersey. He was a fellow of the IEEE and a fellow of the Bell Laboratories. He was also a recipient of the Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Ohio State University College of Engineering. He died of complications following emergency surgery for a ruptured aortic aneurysm in 1992.
