Burr Brown (Texas Instruments) Touch Screen Controller IC's focus ti com/docs/analog/analoghomepage jhtml
Solid materials such as silicon that have a resistivity midway between those of a conductor and a resistor These materials are used as substrates for semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits
Elements in the periodic table that have the property of high conductivity at high temperatures and nearly zero conductivity (property of an insulator) at low termperatures The most prominent of these semiconductor materials are silicon and germanium, which are located in the fourth column of the periodic table" -- The Microprocessor: A Biography, by Michael S Malone, Springer-Verlag, 1996/ For more details (in non-technical form) see the Lexicon of Semiconductor Terms provided by Harris