Transistor

A transistor is a semiconductor device commonly used to amplify or switch electronic signals. A transistor is made of a solid piece of a semiconductor material, with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current flowing through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be much more than the controlling (input) power, the transistor provides amplification of a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually but most are found in integrated circuits.

The transistor is the fundamental building block of modern electronic devices, and its presence is ubiquitous in modern electronic systems.
History
Main article: History of the transistor
A replica of the first working transistor.

Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed the first patent for a transistor in Canada in 1925, describing a device similar to a Field Effect Transistor or "FET"
However, Lilienfeld did not publish any research articles about his devicesand in 1934, German inventor Oskar Heil patented a similar deviceIn 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T's Bell Labs in the United States observed that when electrical contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium, the output power was larger than the input. Solid State Physics Group leader William Shockley saw n 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T's Bell Labs in the United States observed that when electrical contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium, the output power was larger than the input. Solid State Phythe potetential in this, and over the next few months worked to greatly expand the knowledge of semiconductors, and thus could be described worked to greatly expand the knowledge of semiconductors, and thus could be described as the "father of the transistor". The term was coined by John R. Pierce.as the "father of the transistorr".According to physicist/historian Robert Arns, legal papers from the Bell Labs patent show that William Shockley and Gerald Pearson had built operational versions from Lilienfeld's patents, yet they never referenced this work in any of their later research papers or historical articles.The first silicon transistor was produced by Texas Instruments in 1954.[This was the work of Gordon Teal, an expert in growing crystals of high purity, who had previously worked at Bell Labs.The first MOS transistor actually built was by Kahng and Atalla at Bell Labs in 1960.
Importance
The transistor is considered by many to be one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century.

The transistor is the key active component in practically all modern electronics. Its importance in today's society rests on its ability to be mass produced using a highly automated process (fabrication) that achieves astonishingly low per-transistor costs.

Although several companies each produce over a billion individually-packaged (known as discrete) transistors every year
he transistor is the key active component in practically all modern electronics. Its importance in today's society rests on its athe vast majority of transistors produced are in integrated circuits (often shortened to IC, microchips or simply chips) along with diodes, resistors, capacitors and other electronic components to produce complete electronic circuits. A logic gate consists of up to about twenty transistors whereas an advanced microprocessor, as of 2006, can use as many as 1.7 billion transistors (MOSFETs)"About 60 million transistors were built this year [2002] ... for [each] man, woman, and child on Earth.The transistor's low cost, flexibility, and reliability have made it a ubiquitous device. Transistorized mechatronic circuits have replaced electromechanical devices in controlling appliances and machinery. It is often easier and cheaper to use a standard microcontroller and write a computer program to carry out a control function than to design an equivalent mechanical control function.
Usage

The bipolar junction transistor, or BJT, was the most commonly used transistor in the 1960s and 70s. Even after MOSFETs became widely available, the BJT remained the transistor of choice for many analog circuits such as simple amplifiers because of their greater linearity and ease of manufacture. Desirable properties of MOSFETs, such as their utility in low-power devices, usually in the CMOS configuration, allowed them to capture nearly all market share for digital circuits; more recently MOSFETs have captured most analog and power applications as well, including modern clocked analog circuits, voltage regulators, amplifiers, power transmitters, motor drivers, etc.
Simplified operation

The essential usefulness of a transistor comes from its ability to use a small signal applied between one pair of its terminals to control a much larger signal at another pair of terminals. This property is called gain. A transistor can control its output in proportion to the input signal, that is, can act as an amplifier. Or, the transistor can be used to turn current on or off in a circuit as an electrically controlled switch, where the amount of current is determined by other circuit elements.

The two types of transistors have slight differences in how they are used in a circuit. A bipolar transistor has terminals labeled base, collector, and emitter. A small current at the base terminal (that is, flowing from the base to the emitter) can control or switch a much larger current between the collector and emitter terminals. For a field-effect transistor, the terminals are labeled gate, source, and drain, and a voltage at the gate can control a current between source and drain.

The image to the right represents a typical bipolar transistor in a circuit. Charge will flow between emitter and collector terminals depending on the current in the base. Since internally the base and emitter connections behave like a semiconductor diode, a voltage drop develops between base and emitter while the base current exists. The size of this voltage depends on the material the transistor is made from, and is referred to as VBE.
Transistor as a switch
BJT used as an electronic switch, in grounded-emitter configuration.

Transistors are commonly used as electronic switches, for both high power applications including switched-mode power supplies and low power applications such as logic gates.

In a grounded-emitter transistor circuit, such as the light-switch circuit shown, as the base voltage rises the base and collector current rise exponentially, and the collector voltage drops because of the collector load resistor. The relevant equations:

VRC = ICE × RC, the voltage across the load (the lamp with resistance RC)
VRC + VCE = VCC, the supply voltage shown as 6V

If VCE could fall to 0 (perfect closed switch) then Ic could go no higher than VCC / RC, even with higher base voltage and current. The transistor is then said to be saturated. Hence, values of input voltage can be chosen such that the output is either completely off,[12] or completely on. The transistor is acting as a switch, and this type of operation is common in digital circuits where only "on" and "off" values are relevant.