When silicon replaced germanium in the early 1960's as the semiconductor of choice for solid state devices, it converted the entire industry in just a few years because of two important characteristics. First, silicon has a higher energy bandgap, which permits silicon-based devices to operate over a wider temperature range (a feature especially important to the military). Second, and more important, silicon has a native oxide that provided for improved stability and planar, rather than mesa, type devices. Planar technology soon spawned integrated circuits. The integrated circuit in turn brought on the electronics revolution, allowing the complexity of circuits to increase by a factor of two every year (Moore's Law) and bringing us from single transistors to megabit memory chips.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Karp et al. (1986) studied this question.