Professor Jayant Baliga’s invention, the power-saving switch, helped him earn the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement. However, it was not created without obstacles and setbacks.
“I can recall a line from ‘The Ballad of East and West’ by Rudyard Kipling to describe how it was when I began work,” Baliga said. “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”
Baliga developed the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor, a power-saving switch that President Barack Obama’s administration has seen as a part of the equation to make the energy grid more efficient.
“When I began work 30 years ago on the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor, the power-saving switch, at General Electric, companies were working on two disparate technologies—a bipolar transistor and a power MOSFET . They are individual technologies that were being pursued separately,” Baliga said. “I had this idea of combining them. It was believed to be impossible.”
The energy-saving semiconductor switch controls the flow of power from an electrical energy source to any application that needs energy. It is used in air conditioners, compact fluorescent lamps and transportation systems.
“My first setback was in the kind of negative reaction that I received from others,” Baliga said. “There is this phenomenon called latching up.”
Latching up is a process in which an undesirable path develops between the power supply and the ground. This direct path causes the switch to break down due to overheating.
“They said: It will simply latch up and destroy itself,” Baliga said. “I, however, solved this problem. Next, they said: It will switch very slowly. So, it will have very limited applications.”
Through research, Baliga discovered how to troubleshoot slow switches.
“And when all questions were answered, people tended to go: What’s the big deal? I knew it all the way,” Baliga said. “I found truth in the statement by Arthur C. Clarke: Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: one, it’s completely impossible. Two, it’s possible, but it’s not worth doing. Three, I said it was a good idea all along.”
Baliga described success in terms of passion.
“You have to strive to do your best,” Baliga said. “During one visit to a bookstore while I was still a student, I came across The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a book that developed my interest in physics.”
Reading outside the curriculum took Baliga toward electronics.
“Semiconductors were as close as I could get to physics. That’s why I advise graduate students to innovate, to go beyond the curriculum to come up with ideas,” Baliga said.
