Elementary Electronics Concepts

I compiled some elementary electronics concepts. I hope it will helpful for those students who are newbie in this field. Please send your feedback and suggestions if you find this post helpful.

What is insulator?

An object that doesn't allow heat,light sound and electricity to pass through it.

An insulator doesn't have free electrons to move freely or we can say the highest energy band is filled with electrons. Example wood,rubber glass ceramic etc.

What is conductor?

An object that allows the flow of current because it has free electrons present in its valence band. Different materials have different level of of conductivity.

Example all metals are good conductor.

What is semiconductor?

An object whose electrical properties and conductivity lies in between conductors and insulators. They are neither good conductor nor good insulator. There is a threshold voltage at which semiconductor start to conduct.

Example group IV elements in the periodic table like silicon,germanium etc

What is resistor?

It is a two terminal electrical component and passive in nature. As the name implies it creates resistance to regulate the flow of electric current in electronic circuits. The amount of current flows through the circuit is inversely proportional to the resistance. The lower the resistance the higher will be the current flows through the circuit.

It can be used to provide specific voltage to an active device like transistor. This little device keeps your precious component from damage.

What is capacitor?

It is a two terminal electrical component and passive in nature. It consists of metal plates which store electric charges and have potential difference between these plates. The two plates are separated by a dielectric material. One plate accumulate positive charge and the second plate accumulate negative charge.

It is widely used in electronic circuits for example coupling capacitor, in smoothing circuit, in timing circuit, in tuning circuits etc.

What is inductor?

It is a two terminal electrical component and passive in

 nature. It is also called choke or coil. It consists of a conductor in the form of loop or coil. When AC current is passed through it, magnetic field is produced. It stores energy in the form of magnetic field.

It is widely used in surge protectors, oscillators, low pass filters, tuning circuits etc.

What is a diode?

A diode is an electronic component made up of semiconductor material. It is a two terminal pn- junction device. The fundamental property of a diode is to allow current in one direction only (forward bias) while blocking in reverse direction (reverse bias). It has non linear current voltage characteristics. There is a threshold voltage or cut-in voltage to drive the diode in forward bias. It is used in rectification circuits because it allows the current to flow in one direction only. 

What is a transistor?

A transistor is an electronic device made up of semiconductor material. It is a three terminal device. N-type is sandwiched between two p-type materials (PNP configuration) or p-type material is sandwiched between two N-type materials. One terminal acts as an input terminal, one acts as an output terminal the middle one is used for controlling. The three terminals are named as emitter collector and base.

It has three modes of operation cut-off region active region and saturation region. It is used in switching application (when drive in cut-off and saturation region) and audio application as an amplifier (active region)

What is an amplifier?
An amplifier is the basic building block of any electronic device or system. As the name implies, amplifier is used for amplification purpose. When an input is applied to an amplifier, it enhances the magnitude of the applied signal. 

Output = gain X input