electronics (redirected from Electronic company)

electronics, science and technology based on and concerned with the controlled flow of electrons or other carriers of electric charge, especially in semiconductor devices. It is one of the principal branches of electrical engineering. The invention of the transistor, announced in 1948, and the subsequent development of integrated circuits have brought about revolutionary changes in electronics, which was previously based on the technology of the electron tube. The miniaturization and savings in power brought about by these developments have allowed electronic circuits to be packaged more densely, making possible compact computers, advanced radar and navigation systems, and other devices that use very large numbers of components (see microelectronics). It has also brought to the consumer such items as smaller and more reliable radio and television receivers, advanced sound- and video-recording and reproducing systems, microwave ovens, cellular telephones, and powerful yet inexpensive personal computers. The consumer electronics industry—which began in 1920 when radio broadcasting started in the United States—accounts for annual sales of close to $50 billion in the United States alone. Because of advances in electronics manufacturing technology, the cost of electronic products often decreases even as quality and reliability increase. Power requirements are continually reduced, allowing greater portability.

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electronics

Branch of physics that deals with the emission, behaviour, and effects of electrons and with electronic devices. The beginnings of electronics can be traced to experiments with electricity. In the 1880s Thomas Alva Edison and others observed the flow of current between elements in an evacuated glass tube. A two-electrode vacuum tube constructed by John A. Fleming (1849–1945) produced a useful output current. The Audion, invented by Lee De Forest (1907), was followed by further improvements. The invention of the transistor at Bell Labs (1947) initiated a progressive miniaturization of electronic components that by the mid 1980s resulted in high-density microprocessors, which in turn led to tremendous advances in computer technology and computer-based automated systems. See also semiconductor.

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electronics

1. the science and technology concerned with the development, behaviour, and applications of electronic devices and circuits

2. the circuits and devices of a piece of electronic equipment
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electronics [i‚lek′trän·iks]

(physics)

Study, control, and application of the conduction of electricity through gases or vacuum or through semiconducting or conducting materials.

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Electronics

Technology involving the manipulation of voltages and electric currents through the use of various devices for the purpose of performing some useful action. This large field is generally divided into two primary areas, analog electronics and digital electronics.

Analog electronics

Historically, analog electronics was used in large part because of the ease with which circuits could be implemented with analog devices. However, as signals have become more complex, and the ability to fabricate extremely complex digital circuits has increased, the disadvantages of analog electronics have increased in importance, while the importance of simplicity has declined.

In analog electronics, the signals to be manipulated take the form of continuous currents or voltages. The information in the signal is carried by the value of the current or voltage at a particular time t. Some examples of analog electronic signals are amplitude-modulated (AM) and frequency-modulated (FM) radio broadcast signals, thermocouple temperature data signals, and standard audio cassette recording signals. In each of these cases, analog electronic devices and circuits can be used to render the signals intelligible.

Commonly required manipulations include amplification, rectification, and conversion to a nonelectronic signal. Amplification is required when the strength of a signal of interest is not sufficient to perform the task that the signal is required to do. However, the amplification process suffers from the two primary disadvantages of analog electronics: (1) susceptibility to replication errors due to nonlinearities in the amplification process and (2) susceptibility to signal degradation due to the addition, during the amplification process, of noise originating from the analog devices composing the amplifier. These two disadvantages compete with the primary advantage of analog electronics, the ease of implementing any desired electronic signal manipulation. See Amplifier, Distortion (electronic circuits)

Digital electronics

The advent of the transistor in the 1940s made it possible to design simple, inexpensive digital electronic circuits and initiated the explosive growth of digital electronics. Digital signals are represented by a finite set of states rather than a continuum, as is the case for the analog signal. Typically, a digital signal takes on the value 0 or 1; such a signal is called a binary signal. Because digital signals have only a finite set of states, they are amenable to error-correction techniques; this feature gives digital electronics its principal advantage over analog electronics. See Transistor

In common two-level digital electronics, signals are manipulated mathematically. These mathematical operations are known as boolean algebra. The operations permissible in boolean algebra are NOT, AND, OR, and XOR, plus various combinations of these elemental operations.

Electronic circuits are composed of various electronic devices, such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors. In circuits built from discrete components, the components are typically soldered together on a fiberglass board known as a printed circuit board. On one or more surfaces of the printed circuit board are layers of conductive material which has been patterned to form the interconnections between the different components in the circuit. In some cases, the circuits necessary for a particular application are far too complex to build from individual discrete components, and integrated-circuit technology must be employed. Integrated circuits are fabricated entirely from a single piece of semiconductor substrate. It is possible in some cases to put several million electronic devices inside the same integrated circuit. Many integrated circuits can be fabricated on a single wafer of silicon at one time, and at the end of the fabrication process the wafer is sawed into individual integrated circuits. These small pieces, or chips as they are popularly known, are then packaged appropriately for their intended application. See Capacitor, Integrated circuits, Printed circuit

The microprocessor is the most important integrated circuit to arise from the field of electronics. This circuit consists of a set of subcircuits that can perform the tasks necessary for computation and are the heart of modern computers. Microprocessors that understand large numbers of instructions are called complete instruction set computers (CISCs), and microprocessors that have only a very limited instruction set are called reduced instruction set computers (RISCs). See Digital computer

Other circuit designs have been standardized and reduced to integrated-circuit form as well. An example of this process is seen in the telephone modem. Modulation techniques have been standardized to permit the largest possible data-transfer rates in a given amount of bandwidth, and standardized modem chips are available for use in circuit design. See Modem

The memory chip is another important integrated electronic circuit. This circuit consists of a large array of memory cells composed of a transistor and some other circuitry. As the storage capacity of the memory chip has increased, significant miniaturization has taken place. See Circuit (electronics)