In the late 1960s, [[bipolar junction transistor]]s were faster than (p-channel) MOS transistors then used and were more reliable, but they also [[power consumption|consumed much more power]], required more area, and demanded a more complicated manufacturing process. MOS ICs were considered interesting but inadequate for supplanting the fast bipolar circuits in anything but [[niche market]]smarkets, such as low power applications. One of the reasons for the low speed was that MOS transistors had [[Gate (transistor)|gates]] made of [[aluminum]] which led to considerable [[parasitic capacitance]]s using the [[manufacturing process]]esprocesses of the time. The introduction of transistors with gates of [[polycrystalline silicon]] (that became the [[de facto standard|''de facto'' standard]] from the mid-1970s to early 2000s) was an important first step in order to reduce this handicap. This new [[self-aligned gate|''self-aligned silicon-gate'']] transistor was introduced by [[Federico Faggin]] at [[Fairchild Semiconductor]] in early 1968; it was a refinement (and the first working implementation) of ideas and work by John C. Sarace, Tom Klein and [[Robert W. Bower]] (around 1966–67) for a transistor with lower parasitic capacitances that could be manufactured as part of an IC (and not only as a [[discrete component]]). This new type of pMOS transistor was 3–5 times as fast (per watt) as the aluminum-gate pMOS transistor, and it needed less area, had much lower leakage and higher reliability. The same year, Faggin also built the first IC using the new transistor type, the ''Fairchild 3708'' (8-bit [[analogue electronics|analog]] [[multiplexer]] with [[Binary decoder|decoder]]), which demonstrated a substantially improved performance over its metal-gate counterpart. In less than 10 years, the silicon gate MOS transistor replaced bipolar circuits as the main vehicle for complex digital ICs.
