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Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate and other Electric charge. Electronics is a subfield of physics and electrical engineering which uses active devices such as , , and integrated circuits to control and amplify the flow of electric current and to convert it from one form to another, such as from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) or from analog signal signals to digital signal signals.
Electronic devices have hugely influenced the development of many aspects of modern society, such as telecommunications, entertainment, education, health care, industry, and security. The main driving force behind the advancement of electronics is the semiconductor industry, which in response to global demand continually produces ever-more sophisticated electronic devices and circuits. The semiconductor industry is one of the largest and most profitable sectors in the global economy, with annual revenues exceeding $481 billion in 2018. The electronics industry also encompasses other sectors that rely on electronic devices and systems, such as e-commerce, which generated over $29 trillion in online sales in 2017.
(thermionic valves) were the first active electronic components which controlled Electric current flow by influencing the flow of individual Electron, and enabled the construction of equipment that used current amplification and rectification to give us radio, television, radar, long-distance telephony and much more. The early growth of electronics was rapid, and by the 1920s, commercial radio broadcasting and telecommunications were becoming widespread and electronic amplifiers were being used in such diverse applications as long-distance telephony and the music recording industry.
The next big technological step took several decades to appear, when the first working point-contact transistor was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain at Bell Labs in 1947. However, vacuum tubes played a leading role in the field of microwave and high power transmission as well as television receivers until the middle of the 1980s. Since then, solid-state devices have all but completely taken over. Vacuum tubes are still used in some specialist applications such as high power RF amplifiers, , specialist audio equipment, guitar amplifiers and some Cavity magnetron.
In April 1955, the IBM 608 was the first IBM product to use transistor circuits without any vacuum tubes and is believed to be the first all-transistorized calculator to be manufactured for the commercial market. The 608 contained more than 3,000 germanium transistors. Thomas J. Watson Jr. ordered all future IBM products to use transistors in their design. From that time on transistors were almost exclusively used for Logic gate and peripheral devices. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialised applications.
The MOSFET (MOS transistor) was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. (2024). 9783540342588, Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9783540342588 The MOSFET was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. Its advantages include MOSFET scaling, affordability, low power consumption, and high density. It revolutionized the electronics industry, becoming the most widely used electronic device in the world. The MOSFET is the basic element in most modern electronic equipment.
As the complexity of circuits grew, problems arose. One problem was the size of the circuit. A complex circuit like a computer was dependent on speed. If the components were large, the wires interconnecting them must be long. The electric signals took time to go through the circuit, thus slowing the computer. The invention of the integrated circuit by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce solved this problem by making all the components and the chip out of the same block (monolith) of semiconductor material. The circuits could be made smaller, and the manufacturing process could be automated. This led to the idea of integrating all components on a single-crystal silicon wafer, which led to small-scale integration (SSI) in the early 1960s, and then medium-scale integration (MSI) in the late 1960s, followed by VLSI. In 2008, billion-transistor processors became commercially available.
As semiconductor technology developed, many of the functions of analog circuits were taken over by digital circuits, and modern circuits that are entirely analog are less common; their functions being replaced by hybrid approach which, for instance, uses analog circuits at the front end of a device receiving an analog signal, and then use digital processing using microprocessor techniques thereafter.
Sometimes it may be difficult to classify some circuits that have elements of both linear and non-linear operation. An example is the voltage comparator which receives a continuous range of voltage but only outputs one of two levels as in a digital circuit. Similarly, an overdriven transistor amplifier can take on the characteristics of a controlled switch, having essentially two levels of output.
Analog circuits are still widely used for signal amplification, such as in the entertainment industry, and conditioning signals from analog sensors, such as in industrial measurement and control.
Digital circuits use a binary system with two voltage levels labelled "0" and "1" to indicated logical status. Often logic "0" will be a lower voltage and referred to as "Low" while logic "1" is referred to as "High". However, some systems use the reverse definition ("0" is "High") or are current based. Quite often the logic designer may reverse these definitions from one circuit to the next as they see fit to facilitate their design. The definition of the levels as "0" or "1" is arbitrary.
Ternary computer (with three states) logic has been studied, and some prototype computers made, but have not gained any significant practical acceptence. . Universally, and Digital signal processors are constructed with Digital data circuits using such as in the electronic logic gates to generate binary states.
Highly integrated devices:
Due to the complex nature of electronics theory, laboratory experimentation is an important part of the development of electronic devices. These experiments are used to test or verify the engineer's design and detect errors. Historically, electronics labs have consisted of electronics devices and equipment located in a physical space, although in more recent years the trend has been towards electronics lab simulation software, such as CircuitLogix, Multisim, and PSpice.
However, during the 1990s and subsequently, the industry shifted overwhelmingly to East Asia (a process begun with the initial movement of microchip mass-production there in the 1970s), as plentiful, cheap labor, and increasing technological sophistication, became widely available there.Willy Shih (Harvard Business School): "Congress Is Giving Billions To The U.S. Semiconductor Industry. Will It Ease Chip Shortages?" transcript, August 3, 2022, Forbes, retrieved September 12, 2022Lewis, James Andrew: "Strengthening a Transnational Semiconductor Industry", June 2, 2022, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), retrieved September 12, 2022
Over three decades, the United States' global share of semiconductor manufacturing capacity fell, from 37% in 1990, to 12% in 2022. America's pre-eminent semiconductor manufacturer, Intel Corporation, fell far behind its subcontractor Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in manufacturing technology.
By that time, Taiwan had become the world's leading source of advanced semiconductors—followed by South Korea, the United States, Japan, Singapore, and China.
Important semiconductor industry facilities (which often are subsidiaries of a leading producer based elsewhere) also exist in Europe (notably the Netherlands), Southeast Asia, South America, and Israel.
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