Articles - Discretes

I’ve always been interested in simple-looking components which solve well-defined, clear, bounded problems. One carpentry example I encountered and used many years ago is formally known as a hanger bolt, Figure 1. One end has a wood-screw ...

FinFETs redefined chip design when they came onto the scene more than a decade ago. While these nonplanar transistors are still the unofficial industry standard, they may be nearing the end of their life. So, electronics engineers may need to ...

These days, much of the news coverage and discussion in the semiconductor industry is about devices based on the new wide bandgap (WBG) materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) The medium-to-high power applications that ...

There was a time when it wasn't so rare to discover an unusual, scope-like object in an electronics lab. This was the curve tracer, able to display detailed characteristic curves of many components. Early models displayed vacuum tube curves; ...

Freelance Staff Electronic Design Even though gallium-nitride transistors are becoming a more popular solution in terms of power switching, the venerable MOSFET still can be used effectively in current applications. In the wake of gallium-nitride ...

The other day Linda from Purchasing came to me with a problem: Lou from Operations needed to source a replacement for a shorted diode on a switching power supply. The darned thing was marked with a strange part number that no amount of Googling ...

Now another major vacuum tube product seems poised to fade away: the microwave oven Vacuum tubes disappeared from electronic products years ago. Yet there have been some lingering vacuum tube-based products in production. The last major vacuum tube ...

Resettable Circuit Protection for High-Rate-Discharge Li-ion Battery Applications The rapidly expanding market for high-rate-discharge lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries used in applications such as cordless power tools, e-bikes and back-up power ...