Electronic component


An electronic component is any basic discrete electronic device or physical entity part of an electronic system used to affect electrons or their associated fields. Electronic components are mostly industrial products, available in a singular form and are not to be confused with electrical elements, which are conceptual abstractions representing idealized electronic components and elements. A datasheet for an electronic component is a technical document that provides detailed information about the component's specifications, characteristics, and performance. Discrete circuits are made of individual electronic components that only perform one function each as packaged, which are known as discrete components, although strictly the term discrete component refers to such a component with semiconductor material such as individual transistors.
Electronic components have a number of electrical terminals or leads. These leads connect to other electrical components, often over wire, to create an electronic circuit with a particular function. Basic electronic components may be packaged discretely, as arrays or networks of like components, or integrated inside of packages such as semiconductor integrated circuits, hybrid integrated circuits, or thick film devices. The following list of electronic components focuses on the discrete version of these components, treating such packages as components in their own right.

Classification

Components can be classified as passive, active, or electromechanic. The strict physics definition treats passive components as ones that cannot supply energy themselves, whereas a battery would be seen as an active component since it truly acts as a source of energy.
However, electronic engineers who perform circuit analysis use a more restrictive definition of passivity. When only concerned with the energy of signals, it is convenient to ignore the so-called DC circuit and pretend that the power supplying components such as transistors or integrated circuits is absent, though it may in reality be supplied by the DC circuit. Then, the analysis only concerns the AC circuit, an abstraction that ignores DC voltages and currents present in the real-life circuit. This fiction, for instance, lets us view an oscillator as "producing energy" even though in reality the oscillator consumes even more energy from a DC power supply, which we have chosen to ignore. Under that restriction, we define the terms as used in circuit analysis as:
  • Active components rely on a source of energy and usually can inject power into a circuit, though this is not part of the definition. Active components include amplifying components such as transistors, triode vacuum tubes, and tunnel diodes.
  • Passive components cannot introduce net energy into the circuit. They also cannot rely on a source of power, except for what is available from the circuit they are connected to. As a consequence, they cannot amplify, although they may increase a voltage or current. Passive components include two-terminal components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transformers.
  • Electromechanical components can carry out electrical operations by using moving parts or by using electrical connections.
Most passive components with more than two terminals can be described in terms of two-port parameters that satisfy the principle of reciprocity—though there are rare exceptions. In contrast, active components generally lack that property.

Active components

Semiconductors

Transistors

s were considered the invention of the twentieth century that changed electronic circuits forever. A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and electrical power.
  • Field-effect transistors
  • *MOSFET – by far the most widely manufactured electronic component
  • **PMOS
  • **NMOS
  • **CMOS
  • **Power MOSFET
  • ***LDMOS
  • **MuGFET
  • ***FinFET
  • **TFT
  • *FeFET
  • *CNTFET
  • *JFET – N-channel or P-channel
  • **SIT
  • *MESFET
  • *HEMT
  • Composite transistors
  • *BiCMOS
  • *IGBT
  • Other transistors
  • *Bipolar junction transistor – NPN or PNP
  • **Photo transistor – amplified photodetector
  • *Darlington transistor – NPN or PNP
  • **Photo Darlington – amplified photodetector
  • *Sziklai pair
  • *Tetrode transistor – is any transistor having four active terminals.
  • Thyristors
  • *Silicon-controlled rectifier – passes current only after triggered by a sufficient control voltage on its gate
  • *TRIAC – bidirectional SCR
  • *Unijunction transistor
  • *Programmable Unijunction transistor
  • *SITh

    Diodes

Conduct electricity easily in one direction, among more specific behaviors.
  • Diode, rectifier, diode bridge
  • Schottky diode – super fast diode with lower forward voltage drop
  • Zener diode – allows current to flow "backwards" when a specific set voltage is reached.
  • Transient voltage suppression diode, unipolar or bipolar – used to absorb high-voltage spikes
  • Varicap, tuning diode, varactor, variable capacitance diode – a diode whose AC capacitance varies according to the DC voltage applied.
  • Laser diode
  • Light-emitting diode – a diode that emits light
  • Photodiode – passes current in proportion to incident light
  • *Avalanche photodiode – photodiode with internal gain
  • *Solar Cell, photovoltaic cell, PV array or panel – produces power from light
  • DIAC – often used to trigger an SCR
  • Constant-current diode
  • Step recovery diode
  • Tunnel diode - very fast diode based on quantum mechanical tunneling

    Integrated circuits

Integrated Circuits can serve a variety of purposes, including acting as a timer, performing digital to analog conversion, performing amplification, or being used for logical operations.
Current:
Obsolete:
A vacuum tube is based on current conduction through a vacuum.
Optical detectors or emitters
Obsolete:
Sources of electrical power:
Components incapable of controlling current by means of another electrical signal are called passive devices. Resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transformers are all considered passive devices.

Resistors

Pass current in proportion to voltage and oppose current.
Capacitors store and release electrical charge. They are used for filtering power supply lines, tuning resonant circuits, and for blocking DC voltages while passing AC signals, among numerous other uses.