Integrated Circuits
An integrated circuit (IC) is a thin rectangular piece of semiconductor upon which, using a photographic process, thousands of electronic components, and the conducting paths to connect them, are printed. The types circuits that can be etched into a semiconductor chip range from amplifiers to logic gates and even microprocessors with millions of transistors. More ...
How to Read a Capacitor's Values
Due to the limited space available for printing, physically small capacitors are especially difficult to read. Therefore capacitors use a wide variety of codes to describe their characteristics. More ...
Inductors in DC Circuits
When voltage first applied current through an inductive circuit is low because a magnetic field starts building in the coil, and this magnetic field creates a back electromotive force (EMF) that oppose the current in the inductor. More ...
Integrated Circuit Manufacturing CMOS Technology
The MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) is the dominant device used in modern integrated circuits because it can be scaled to smaller dimensions than other types of devices. More ...
Transformers
Transformers work according to the principle of electromagnetic induction. If the first coil carries sine-wave ac of a certain frequency, then the induced current will be sine-wave ac of the same frequency in the second coil. More ...
Integrated Circuit Manufacturing CMOS Fabrication Sequence
Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) is used to fabricate digital circuits and IC chips. It is a combination of NMOS (N-type Metal Oxide Semiconductor) and PMOS (P-type Metal Oxide Semiconductor) transistor pairs. CMOS fabrication can be carried out in many ways. P-well is one of the processes in which CMOS fabrication is realized. More ...
Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Deposition
Many different types of thin films are used to manufacture integrated circuits, including thermal oxides, dielectric layers, epitaxial layers, polycrystalline silicon, and metal films. This article addresses two techniques for depositing such films. More ...
Junction Field Effect Transistor (JFET)
A Junction Field Effect Transistor (JFET) consists of a channel and a pn junction. The gate controls the conductance of the channel. A JFET is a voltage controlled device, therefore no current flows into the gate. More ...
Introduction to Integrated Circuit Manufacturing
An integrated circuit is an ensemble of active (e.g., transistors) and passive devices (e.g., resistors, capacitors, and inductors) formed on and within a single-crystal semiconductor substrate and interconnected by a metallization pattern. More ...
Electric Fields and Static Electricity
Static electricity is a phenomenon caused by a buildup of unbalanced electric charge that is not moving. We are all familiar with the static electric charge caused by dragging our feet across a carpet and then the sudden static discharge caused by grabbing a door knob. More ...
Triac
You can of a triac as two back-to-back SCRs with the cathode of one SCR connected to the anode of the other. The gates are connected together. Because we have a two SCRs configuration you can control the switching of both half cycles. More ...
Conductors and Insulators
Materials can be classified depending on whether they allow charge to move. If charge can easily move through a material, these materials are called conductors. If charge cannot move through a material, then this material is called an insulator. More ...
Modern Semiconductor Manufacturing
The modern semiconductor manufacturing process sequence is the most sophisticated and unforgiving volume production technology that has ever been practiced successfully. It consists of a complex series of hundreds of unit process steps that must be performed very nearly flawlessly. More ...
Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Bipolar Technology
Bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) are still used in integrated circuits (ICs) for switching, signal amplification, and radio-frequency circuits because they are faster than CMOS transistors. More ...
