The first working device was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Labs the three shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their achievement. Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed the concept of a field-effect transistor in 1926, but it was not possible to construct a working device at that time. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more in miniature form are found embedded in integrated circuits. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).Ī transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power.

Metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), showing gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals.

Types of transistor download