April 2011
Intermediate to advanced
1128 pages
25h 6m
English
book
Electrical Engineering: Know It All
by Clive Maxfield, John Bird, Tim Williams, Walt Kester, Dan Bensky
Content preview from Electrical Engineering: Know It All
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Chapter 10
Digital Electronics
Clive Maxfield
10.1 Semiconductors
Most materials are conductors, insulators, or something in-between, but a special class of materials known as semiconductors can be persuaded to exhibit both conducting and insulating properties. The first semiconductor to undergo evaluation was the element germanium (chemical symbol Ge). However, for a variety of reasons, silicon (chemical symbol Si) replaced germanium as the semiconductor of choice. As silicon is the main constituent of sand and one of the most common elements on earth (silicon accounts for approximately 28% of the earth’s crust), we aren’t in any danger of running out of it in the foreseeable future.
Pure crystalline silicon acts as an insulator; however, scientists ...
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.