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Antoine
Lavoisier
(French, 1743-1794)
who is considered the father of modern
chemistry, discovered the element silicon.
Silicon is the main component in semiconconductor
devices. Lavoisier also introduced the
Metric system of measurement. |
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The invention of the transistor
in 1947 at Bell Labs launched the electronics
age. This small, three-terminal device allows
current to flow between two of its terminals
depending on the current or voltage applied
on the third. It can be used for amplification,
switching, modulation, and many other tasks
that had only been possible by large, less robust
vacuum tubes or mechanical relay switches. Over
time, transistors became further miniaturized
within integrated circuits (chips).
Sample mathematics of a Bipolar Junction
Transistor (Ebers-Moll model):
Emitter current |
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Collector current |
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| Base-internal current |
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Where:
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is the common
base forward short circuit current gain
(0.98 to 0.998) |
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is the reverse saturation
current of the base-emitter diode (on
the order of 10-15
to 10-12 amperes)
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is the thermal voltage
(approximately 26 mV at room temperature
≈ 300 K) |
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is the base-emitter voltage
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is the base width |
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