Last time on Circuit VR, we looked at creating a very simple common emitter amplifier, but we didn’t talk about how to select the capacitor values, or much about why we wanted them. We are going to ...

A Planet Analog article, “ 2N3904: Why use a 60-year-old transistor? ” by Bill Schweber, inspired some interest in this old ...

The two types of standard transistors are PNP and NPN which differs in circuit symbols. The layers of semiconductor material used to make the transistor are denoted by the letters. To keep a straight ...

Sometimes I wish FETs had become practical before bipolar transistors. A FET is a lot more like a tube and amplifies voltages. Bipolar transistors amplify current and that makes them a bit harder to ...

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The discovery of carbon nanotubes has heralded a new era of scientific discovery that includes the promise of ultra-sensitive bomb detectors and super-fast computer memory chips. But finding a way to ...

As with many inventions, two people had the idea for an integrated circuit at almost the same time. Transistors had become commonplace in everything from radios to phones to computers, and now ...

Transistors, the building blocks of modern electronics, are typically made of silicon. Because it's a semiconductor, this material can control the flow of electricity in a circuit. But silicon has ...

The telephone company had problems with vacuum tubes, too, and hoped to find something else to use for switching telephone calls. The idea of somehow using semiconductors (solid materials such as ...