Thor Harald Johansen wrote:
> I want to know how transistors work, and how they work together with other
> components.
(The question is broad. This answer is intentionally broad and vastly
oversimplifies most of the details,
and is downright wrong in some areas.)
Transistor:
A device composed of semiconductor material that amplifies a signal or opens
or closes a circuit.
There are essentially two modes of operation. You can use it in a "digital"
way as a current controlled
switch. You can use it in an "analog" way as a current controlled amplifier.
In the digital realm, sets of transistors can be used to build basic logic
gates. NAND gates are probably
the easiest to build, and are also functionally complete (all other binary
gates can be built from NAND
gates). Sets of gates can be combined to build things like FLIP-FLOPS, RAM
circuits, and microprocessor
cores. Current technology is capable of manufacturing incredible numbers of
transistors which are on the order
of microns in size.
In the analog realm, sets of transistors can be used to build things like
current mirrors, current controlled
voltage sources, voltage controlled current sources, etc...
Transistors are three terminal devices. The terminals are named base,
emitter, and collector. A small
amount of current into the base terminal controls how much current flows from
the emitter to the collector.
The ratio of these currents is often referred to as the "beta" of the
transistor.
If you want details of "how" a transistor works, that's a senior level class
in an Electrical Engineering
course, and involves things like "electron-hole mobility in intrinsic
silicon", and doping concentrations.
You'll probably also wind up talking about differential equations.
Does that help yout out at all?
--
Adam Wozniak Senior Software Design Engineer
Surveyor Corporation
4548 Broad Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
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