NCSU prof to receive medal for device
October 21, 2011 |
B. Jayant Baliga’s most important invention – a kind of switch for efficiently controlling the flow of electrical power – is obscure but nearly everywhere, and without it life would be really, really different. The device, called an insulated gate bipolar transistor, can now be found in seemingly everything that uses or creates electricity, including household appliances, computers, cars, industrial and medical equipment, windmills and solar panels.