germanium

The (these days) extremely rare germanium semiconductors sound better than modern silicon semiconducters....so the guys building fuzz and other similar effects are using the dwindling supply of NOS germanium transistors and diodes.

Cost-wise solar panels are not that expensive, they're mostly silicon doped with germanium (and other elements).

You can make a very simple GSM signal detector using a germanium diode, an LED, and a bit of wire.

They needed to keep the discrete germanium transistors though because the SLT modules were silicon-based.

Hard to believe those those germanium transistors aren't all leaky as heck by now.

Noyce's design was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium.

I also left countless 'cats whisker'/crystal set (germanium diode) receivers and ZN414-based creations in my wake.

In our terms, that would be a switch from not just from one programming language to another, but probably from silicon-based chips to germanium-bases chips.

It's silicon-germanium (so still has silicon in it).

Some of the diodes are made of germanium.

Similarly, it's none of the airline's business whether it's sodium-potassium, silicon, or germanium that transfers entropy about tickets; the initial and final states are the same.

My mom bought me a crystal radio kit, some books and a CK722 germanium transistor, and later, an Ocean Hopper shortwave receiver (all of which I still have).

IBM had to use "extreme ultraviolet" and silicon germanium rather than plain silicon.

> "Germanium differs from silicon in that the supply for germanium is limited by the availability of exploitable sources, while the supply of silicon is only limited by production capacity since silicon comes from ordinary sand or quartz.

As a result, while silicon could be bought in 1998 for less than $10 per kg,[20] the price of 1 kg of germanium was then almost $800.[20]" So nearly 2 orders of magnitude price difference.

>The scientists at Jülich’s Peter Grünberg Institute have now for the first time succeeded in creating a “real” direct main group IV semiconductor laser by combining germanium and tin, which is also classed in main group IV.

As a simple example, Germanium-based photo diodes do exist), materials research could conceivably produce other materials that work, too.

The press articles about this generally are misleading in that they use Silicon-Germanium as the catch phrase that's represents the breakthrough.

Germanium conducts at a lower voltage, sometimes as low as 0.15V vs 0.6-0.7V for silicon.