Kurt Lehovec

Who is Kurt Lehovec?

Kurt Lehovec was one of the pioneers of the integrated circuit. He innovated the concept of p-n junction isolation used in every circuit element with a guard ring: a reverse-biased p-n junction surrounding the planar periphery of that element. This patent was assigned to Sprague Electric.

Because Lehovec was under salary with Sprague, he was paid only one dollar for this invention.

Lehovec was born June 12, 1918 in Ledvice, in northern Bohemia, of the Czech Republic. He was educated there and went to the US in 1947 under the auspices of Operation Paperclip which allowed scientists and engineers to emigrate. With Accardo and Jamgochian, he explained the first light-emitting diodes.

The important case of fast ionic conduction in solid states is one in a surface space-charge layer of ionic crystals. Such conduction was first predicted by K.Lehovec in the paper “Space-charge layer and distribution of lattice defects at the surface of ionic crystals”. As a space-charge layer has nanometer thickness, the effect is directly related to nanoionics. The Lehovec’s effect had given a basis for a creation of multitude nanostructured fast ion conductors which used in modern portable lithium batteries and fuel cells.