Transistors are usually made using very pure silicon, while some are made from germanium and other semiconductor materials.

Today, the most popular type of transistor is the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), that was also invented at Bell Labs Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng built it in 1959.īefore we look at how transistors work, let’s talk about what transistors are made up of. It was only in 1947 that the first working device - a point-contact transistor - was built by American physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain as they worked under William Shockley at Bell Labs the trio even won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for this breakthrough. The invention of transistors has indeed revolutionized the field of electronics, as they helped facilitate the creation of smaller and cheaper radios, calculators, and even computers, among other electronic devices.Ī little bit about the history of the transistor: it was the Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld who came up with the concept of a field-effect transistor in 1926, although it was not possible to build a working prototype at that point of time. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many are found embedded in integrated circuits. input, a transistor is able to amplify a signal.

And since the controlled power aka output can be higher than the controlling power, i.e. The current is controlled through a pair of terminals by the voltage or current applied to another pair of the transistor’s terminals. It is made of semiconductor material and has at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. In this blog, we shall look at transistors, what they do, how they function and their major applications.Ī basic building block of modern electronics, a transistor is a semiconductor device that’s used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power. What is a transistor? When we learn about electronics and basic circuits, transistors are a major component other electronic components include resistors, inductors, capacitors and diodes.

Define transistor