Talk:MOSFET#Mestro2016 and Jagged 85 cleanup

As a board and ASIC level designer engineer for the past three decades, I think this article provides necessary information and is a good reference for new and experienced designers. It is definitely not for semiconductor physicists, because they will be way above this article, however it likely will be above non-technical persons who likely won't visit this page anyway or who won't need to read more than the introductory paragraphs. MOSFETs are complicated devices and if you don't know at least what is given in this article then you very likely won't be able to read the data sheets of the various types of discrete MOSFETs or of ICs whose interface outputs/inputs are made of such MOSFETs in order to design proper circuits. This article is a good and easily accessible resource for new designers or old designers - who may only do one or two designs every year or two. Of course, it's also a similarly useful resource for engineering, technology and technologist students to use in addition to their textbooks, which may provide more or less information. So, please don't dumb this article down. Indeed, it should be improved to present the information needed in the best way possible to allow these types of people to do real work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.107.66.194 (talk) 22:58, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

• While I agree with what you are saying, the argument can (and perhaps should) be made that wikipedia is not for people who are designers, but a general resource. Designers should perhaps consult other sources (textbooks on the matter, for example). Hence, it might make sense to simplify the article at least somewhat.

TheUnnamedNewbie (talk) 19:12, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

:As an uninitiated seeker of knowledge about MOSFETs, I have to agree with TheUnnamedNewbie. The "design engineer" has been indoctrinated (or perhaps innoculated is a better term) with the terminology and concepts needed to understand this article. I find articles that use terms not previously defined to be near useless. If the author decides not to define their terms, this is the most judicious time to use links to articles where those terms are defined.

:I hope my reasoning is not found to be out of line. Dwightfowler (talk) 18:26, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Hey. Just to let everybody know @Maestro2016 the main contributor to this article and MOSFET applications, as well as hundreds of others has been banned for being sock puppet of banned user @Jagged 85, a well known vandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Jagged_85. You can see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85 and

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Jagged_85 for more info about him. This article and MOSFET applications contains most of the errors and exaggerations regarding Atalla/MOSFET, introduced into dozens of other articles all across Wikipedia. For instance it exaggerate Attalla and Kahng contribution suggesting that they single-handedly invented MOSFET and all of it's modern application is due to them. I'll copy what I wrote on Transistor talkpage:

"I am currently reading To the Digital Age: Research Labs, Start-up Companies, and the Rise of MOS Technology by Ross Knox Bassett. Bassett is professional historian of science, so his work is as reliable as it gets. I have huge problems with the way this article and other present history of MOS transistor. First of all as Bassett show there was very little new in Attalah and Kahng invention, as Bassett puts it:

"Atalla appears to have conceived it, but it was an invention in a different sense than the transistors of Bardeen and Brattain and Shockley. The invention of both the pointcontact transistor and the junction transistor involved novel effects. The principles that Atalla’s device used were well known; veterans in the field would have recognized them as ones that had been tried without success by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley. Atalla recycled these principles using the advanced fabrication techniques that Bell Labs had developed to make diffused bipolar junction transistors. In some sense Atalla’s biggest breakthrough was an intellectual one, thinking that such a device was worth making at all"(page 24). Attalah and Kahng doe not even give this device a name, again from Bassett:

"Atalla and Kahng’s writings provide evidence that even they had ambivalence about what they had done. A name is obviously one of the first steps in the serious consideration of any kind of invention, and Atalla and Kahng’s failure to name their device implies that they saw it as stillborn. They did not even identify their device as a transistor, suggesting a reluctance to even put their work into the same family line as the work of Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley. Atalla and Kahng’s paper at the 1960 SSDRC did not establish their device as a promising subject for research or even as something recognized by the semiconductor community at large. The conference chairman made no mention of Atalla and Kahng’s work in his brief report on the technical highlights of the conference, although he did mention Bell’s epitaxial transistor. No further work on a device like Atalla and Kahng’s was presented at either the SSDRC or the Electron Device Conference over the next two years. Two articles reviewing the state of the semiconductor field in 1962 made no mention of Atalla and Kahng’s device. Their work seemed to be a dead end".

The reason MOS transistor even received attention was due two factors:first passivation of silicon surfaces by silicon dioxide gave hope the problems of semiconductor surfaces could be resolved, and second invention of integrated circuit change the way transistor are judged, making MOS simplicity attractive to some(page 13). It will take many years and many people working on it to make MOS practical. Again Basset write that, for example in IBM even in 1967 the future of MOS technology was far from clear(page 106). Contribution from people like Wanlass was just as important as Atalla and Kahng work."

To give other example,in MOSFET applications it is said that "MOSFETs are the basis for modern electric road vehicles". The source for that is an obscure 30 years old abstract, which says that "Recent developments in the technology of permanent magnetic materials, power MOSFETs and microcontrollers have opened the way for significant advances in electric vehicle drive systems". Nowhere does it says MOSFET is the basis of modern electric vehicles.This is one example, but it's just a tip of the iceberg. You can also check my edits, where I did cleanup after Maestro2016/Jagged 85 to find many more examples related to source abuse relating to MOSFET and Atalla. In my opinion this article and MOSFET applications should be stabbed, or at very least massively trimmed, because it would simply take too much time to clean them up.

We can add good and neutral pieces of information later, once we verify them. Also according to Wikipedia:Banning policy:Anyone is free to revert any edits made in violation of a ban, without giving any further reason and without regard to the three-revert rule. I think other articles edited by Maestro2016/Jagged 85 can be cleaned up, as they are smaller. In general if you see exceptional claim that is sourced by hard-to-check source or you simply can't immediately verify it with high quality source, it should be deleted as this was one of Jagged 85 favorite tactics to introduce disinformation.

Thank you.

DMKR2005 (talk) 18:49, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

:Yes, please revert much or all of the overstatement of the Atalla and Kahng contributions that were added by Maestro2016/Jagged 85. I'm sure their contribution was valuable and worth mentioning, but the current imbalanced over-emphasis is pretty awful. I could perhaps help, but am pretty busy with work... Dicklyon (talk) 02:27, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

:I don't quite recall whether Lilienfeld was able to show how to make a working FET. Shockley also "invented" the MOSFET, I think. But Atalla and Kahng convincingly made one work, iirc. So that's important. But to state simply that they "invented" the MOSFET contributes more bias than understanding. So we should work on that. Not by spamming the names Atalla and Kahng in every possible place, but by discussing the early invention of the FET and MOSFET some place and linking it. Dicklyon (talk) 02:52, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

:Maestro2016's significant edits to this article were from 27 June 2019 through 12 July 2020. In total, they made nearly 1000 edits. The article grew by 48% during this time. I don't think we need to stub the whole thing. Worst case, we restore the article to its [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MOSFET&oldid=899698993 state before this started]. Not all of Maestro2016's contributions were problematic but I appreciate that removing them is arguably a safer way to deal with them than reviewing. If we are able to summon the wherewithal to review, we could end up with something better than what we had before Maestro2016 and better than the current revision. ~Kvng (talk) 14:48, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

:: Thanks Dicklyon and Kvng for suggestions. When I said stubbed I mean return to version before Maestro2016/Jagged85 edits. I think that's what we should do. After that we can add more information about Atalla and Kahng contribution. I have Ross Bassett To the Digital Age book with me, which is very good history book about MOSFET. After we return to pre Jagged-85 state, we can add paragraph about Atalla role in MOSFET. There is also MOSFET applications article which is spinoff of this article, and is entirely written by Maestro2016/Jagged 85. What do you think we should do with it? DMKR2005 (talk) 15:17, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

:::A quick look at MOSFET applications indicates the whole History section should go. I would like to review the rest. I would also like an opportunity to review Maestro2016's changes to this article. I haven't figured out how to do the diff over 1 year and 1000 edits. Any wiki tips would be appreciated. ~Kvng (talk) 15:33, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

::::If there's anything good in MOSFET applications, it's probably best to merge it into MOSFET and redirect to a section. I have no objection to rolling back MOSFET to a pre-Maestro state, being careful to put back constructive contributions of others if any are there. Dicklyon (talk) 17:43, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

:::::Thanks. I think returning to pre-Maestro2016 state and adding Atalla and Kahng contributions is the way to go. DMKR2005 (talk) 21:24, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

::::::I struck my comment about merging applications back to the main article. Maestro did the split, and it was probably a good idea. Just need to clean up his revisionist emphasis on Atalla everywhere. Dicklyon (talk) 18:32, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

:::::::Thank you. Speaking on MOSFET applications we would also need to check this article for errors and exaggeration. See for instance above about MOSFET being the basis for modern electric road vehicles DMKR2005 (talk) 20:55, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

::::::::I thought most power applications had gone to Si MOSFETs by now, but [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7042156 this article] suggests that SiC MOSFETs and Si IGBTs are pretty hot in electric cars. Dicklyon (talk) 00:31, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

:Hi!! I saw this Maestro2016 account spam the same Atalla tertiary webpage citation all over wikipedia. There's so much I thought it was a bot, then realized that he edited maliciously other pages as well, with the same false claims from citations and citation deletion, to remove the achievements of certain people and misrepresent the contributions of others. Maestro2016 was recently active in this very page under an IP. I already cleaned up a lot of the spam. A fast way to find the spam is by searching this on google: site:en.wikipedia.org "mosfet" "atalla". Would be nice if you helped me. Wikain (talk) 16:07, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

There are appeared to be an edit war in this article regarding Atalla contribution. Please refer to the section above where I explained in details the problem with Jagged85/Maestro2016 edits. This is from the books written by Ross Knox Bassett, who is professional historian of science.The reason I edited so many article on Atalla is because his contribution were wildly exaggerated by Jagged85/Meastro2016. I think we can add Atalla contribution into the lead, namely that his work demonstrated that semiconductor surfaces problem could be solved and thats very important. Also note articles written by journalists are often themselves influenced by Wikipedia and are not as reliable as academic literature. DMKR2005 (talk) 01:40, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

:I agree that a rewrite of this and other articles, focusing on higher quality sources such as Bassett, and toning down or removing much of the content spammed around by Maestro2016, would be a good improvement. When you revert an IP that's pushing the Atalla narrative, put a link to this discussion section in the edit summary to make sure they've seen notified, and let's see what they have to say. Dicklyon (talk) 05:01, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

::Thanks. The edit war continue. Maybe we should move this page to semi protected status? DMKR2005 (talk) 01:40, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

:::I asked for semi-protection. See Wikipedia:Requests for page protection/Increase#MOSFET. Dicklyon (talk) 03:11, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

::::Thank you ! And I will probably add some information on Atalla in the lead since his work is very important DMKR2005 (talk) 06:39, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

The ecee.colorado.edu link is dead. Here's an archived version of it: https://web.archive.org/web/20210723151950/http://ecee.colorado.edu:80/~bart/book/book/chapter7/ch7_7.htm

Since I'm not (yet) `autoconfirmed`, I couldn't edit the page. Friendfx (talk) 01:12, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

I added circuit symbols in "Circuit symbols" section for enhancement mode MOSFETs which show the intrinsic body diode. I just searched the article but don't see any other mention of the intrinsic body diode...we should at least say something about it, such as why it is there and why need to be aware of it, etc. Em3rgent0rdr (talk) 22:06, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

:I've resolved this with [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MOSFET&diff=1297513683&oldid=1297412640 an edit adding cross-section image with the body diodes and a caption discussing them]. Em3rgent0rdr (talk) 17:41, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

{{See| Wikipedia: External links}}

:Some things just grow during incremental edits and sometimes get out of hand. The "External links" section, one of the optional appendices, was expanded to 17 entries. Three seems to be an acceptable number, and of course, everyone has their favorite to try to add for a fourth. Consensus needs to determine this. A tag indicates concerns.

:However, none is needed for article promotion.

:Some links may be included in WP:ELNO, or What Wikipedia is not (policy) such as WP:NOTREPOSITORY or WP:NOTGUIDE.

• WP:ELDEAD may apply.
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:Second paragraph, {{tq|acceptable external links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy.}}

• Please also note:
• WP:ELBURDEN: {{tq|Disputed links should be excluded by default unless and until there is a consensus to include them}}. Please do not add back more links without consensus. Simple solution to facilitate career maintenance tag. Move links here for discussion.

:Moved links:

• {{cite web|url=http://assets.nexperia.com/documents/application-note/AN11158.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://assets.nexperia.com/documents/application-note/AN11158.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|title=Understanding power MOSFET data sheet parameters – Nexperia PDF Application Note AN11158}}
• {{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080928200323/http://www.automotivedesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml%3B?articleID=191900470|url=http://www.automotivedesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml%3B?articleID=191900470|archive-date=28 September 2008|title= An introduction to depletion-mode MOSFETs}}
• {{cite web|url=http://www.alpha-europe.de/microelectronics-products/dmos-transistors/|title=Power MOSFETs|access-date=2010-03-04|archive-date=2012-07-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120706010707/http://www.alpha-europe.de/microelectronics-products/dmos-transistors/|url-status=dead}}
• {{cite web|url=http://www.powerguru.org/2012/04/15/criteria-for-a-successful-selection-of-igbt-and-mosfet-modules/|title=Criteria for Successful Selection of IGBT and MOSFET Modules|access-date=2018-12-16|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112152008/http://www.powerguru.org/2012/04/15/criteria-for-a-successful-selection-of-igbt-and-mosfet-modules/|archive-date=2012-11-12|url-status=dead}}
• {{cite web|url=http://www.ece.byu.edu/cleanroom/virtual_cleanroom.parts/MOSFETProcess.html|title=MOSFET Process Step by Step|access-date=2016-02-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090822214640/http://www.ece.byu.edu/cleanroom/virtual_cleanroom.parts/MOSFETProcess.html|archive-date=2009-08-22|url-status=dead}} A Flash slide showing the fabricating process of a MOSFET in detail
• {{cite web|url=http://www.ece.byu.edu/cleanroom/MOSFET_calc.phtml|title=MOSFET Calculator|access-date=2008-06-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080527192452/http://www.ece.byu.edu/cleanroom/MOSFET_calc.phtml|archive-date=2008-05-27|url-status=dead}}
• {{cite web|url=http://ecee.colorado.edu/~bart/book/book/chapter7/ch7_7.htm#7_7_7|title=Advanced MOSFET issues|website=ecee.{{not a typo|colorado}}.edu|date=27 November 2010}}
• {{cite web|url=http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/mmg/teaching/linearcircuits/mosfet.html|title=MOSFET applet}}
• {{cite book |first1=Ulrich |last1=Nicolai |first2=Tobias |last2=Reimann |first3=Jürgen |last3=Petzoldt |first4=Josef |last4=Lutz |title=Application Manual IGBT and MOSFET Power Modules |edition=1st |publisher=ISLE Verlag |date=1998 |isbn=978-3-932633-24-9 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120302072616/http://www.semikron.com/skcompub/en/application_manual-193.htm |url=http://www.semikron.com/skcompub/en/application_manual-193.htm |archive-date=2 March 2012}}
• {{cite book|last1=Wintrich |first1=Arendt |last2=Nicolai |first2=Ulrich |last3=Tursky |first3=Werner |last4=Reimann |first4=Tobias |title=PDF-Version |url=http://www.powerguru.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/SEMIKRON_application_manual_power_semiconductors.pdf |edition=2nd |date=2011 |publisher=Semikron |location=Nuremberg |isbn=978-3-938843-66-6 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130903030232/http://www.powerguru.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/SEMIKRON_application_manual_power_semiconductors.pdf |archivedate=3 September 2013 }}
• {{cite web|url=http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-002Spring-2007/CourseHome/index.htm|title=MIT Open Courseware 6.002 – Spring 2007}}
• {{cite web|url=http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-012-microelectronic-devices-and-circuits-fall-2009/|title=MIT Open Courseware 6.012 – Fall 2009}}
• {{cite web|url=http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~alan/index_files/ECE3040Lecture.htm|title=Georgia Tech BJT and FET Slides}}
• {{cite web|url=http://www.circuitdesign.info/blog/2008/12/mos-diffusion-parasitics/|title=CircuitDesign: MOS Diffusion Parasitics|date=14 December 2008 }}
• {{Cite journal|website=nanoHUB Papers|url=http://nanohub.org/resources/5306|title=Course on Physics of Nanoscale Transistors|date=2008|last1=Lundstrom|first1=Mark}}
• {{Cite journal|website=nanoHUB Papers |url=http://nanohub.org/resources/489|title=Notes on Ballistic MOSFETs|last1=Lundstrom |first1=Mark |date=2005}} -- Otr500 (talk) 07:49, 29 June 2025 (UTC)