Modern germanium diodes and transistors?

[Mark Aitchison]

Does anyone make germanium diodes or germanium transistors now? I think
I heard of some expensive modern germanium high frequency devices (but
I'm not sure if that was simply "a few decades old" instead of "many
decades old". There are some advantages with germanium in some
situations, but all the germanium diodes (for instance) I know of are
"new Old Stock" (or "Old Old Stock"!) and not particularly good in many
respects partially because of factors I guess germanium will always
have, but probably largely because the production techniques have
generally improved since then.

If somebody made germanium diodes or transistors today, could they be
much better, closer tolerance, less noisey, etc than before? Are
germanium transistors getting a bum rap simply because they used
techniques that also gave poor silicon transistors back then?

Mark A

[Joerg]

Mark Aitchison wrote:

Says their 1N34 Ge Diodes are new but I don't know this company:
http://www.web-tronics.com/1n34.html

Then there is:
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/products/pdf/1n34a.pdf

AFAICT this diode didn't show up on Semtech's parts portfolio so I am
not sure whether they still make them.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

[RST Engineering (jw)]

Whatever happened to "Oliver Germanium" and his company?

JIm

"Joerg" <notthis...@removethispacbell.net> wrote in message
news:DbWLh.47$u03...@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net...

> Mark Aitchison wrote:
>
>> Does anyone make germanium diodes or germanium transistors now?>

[Joerg]

David DiGiacomo wrote:
> In article <F2dMh.3$5e3....@news.sisna.com>,

> RST Engineering \(jw\) <j...@rstengineering.com> wrote:
>
>>Whatever happened to "Oliver Germanium" and his company?
>
>

> A remnant of the company still exists, but only makes optoelectronics:
>
> http://www.gpd-ir.com/products.htm

It surprised me that there wasn't a Russian company that took over at
least the production of Ge diodes. I could imagine that there would be
sufficient market size for a small enterprise to thrive on that. After
all, Svetlana has done just that for tubes.

[Joerg]

David DiGiacomo wrote:

> In article <DbWLh.47$u03...@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net>,

> Joerg <notthis...@removethispacbell.net> wrote:
>
>>Mark Aitchison wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Does anyone make germanium diodes or germanium transistors now?
>>

>>Says their 1N34 Ge Diodes are new but I don't know this company:
>>http://www.web-tronics.com/1n34.html
>>
>>Then there is:
>>http://www.circuitspecialists.com/products/pdf/1n34a.pdf
>
>

> Those 2 links are both the same company. My guess is that they buy them
> in China:
>
> http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?Type=&SearchText=germanium+diode&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=0

Interesting! So it seems that at least Ge diodes are still made. That
alone can solve a slew of problems.