THE TRANSISTOR

CSC 5 Prof. Cassidy

What is a transistor?

What does it do?

How does it do it?

Who invented it and why?

Some Web sites:

www.pbs.org/transistor

www.lucent.com/minds/transistor

www.intel.com/intel/intelis/museum

Some Study Questions

Briefly answer the following questions using material from the class and the web sites.

1. On the atomic level how do a conductor, an insulator, and a semiconductor differ from each other?

2. How can a pure crystal of silicon be turned into an n-type semiconductor (negative charges flowing)?

3. What does a transistor do?

4. What was the technical problem that led to the invention of the transistor?

5. Briefly describe the career of one of the inventors, before and after the invention.

6. In the following transistor there is a + charge on the source wire. If V_in is positive (1), does V_out indicate the bit 0 or 1? Explain.