Why electricians are not always friends with electronics. Part 2. How to study electronics

The first part of the article:Why electricians are not always friends with electronics

First of all, safety precautions

Some electronic devices are galvanically isolated from the lighting network. Therefore, compliance with safety regulations will not be superfluous, but this is a topic for another article, and many articles have already been written, anyone who wishes can read on their own. Moreover, it is assumed that everyone reading this article is familiar with the safety rules.

Elemental base

The element base is what electronic circuits consist of, in other words, these are parts that are soldered onto printed circuit boards. And the entire elemental base cannot be described even in a huge thick book: for example, the online store of radio components “Elitan” offers customers over one million items of goods from more than a thousand manufacturers from around the world.

Almost all modern electronic equipment is assembled on imported, quite simply, bourgeois element base. But in this regard, one should not particularly be upset, since the documentation for almost all microcircuits, diodes, transistors, thyristors and other details can be found in the DATA SHEET or in Russian technical descriptions. Although all of these "datasheets" are in English, understanding them is fairly easy.

Those who are engaged in the repair of electronic equipment know that it is not always possible to find a diagram of the device being repaired. In this case, the DATA SHEET on the microcircuit helps a lot: you can find all the inputs and outputs, strobe and control signals, and understand what the microcircuit does in the device.

The development of electronic technology. Moore's Law

Electronic technology is developing very quickly and dynamically. The first integrated circuits appeared in 1965, and soon after that, one of the founders of Intel, Gordon Moore, opened a law that received his name. Moore’s law stated that every 18 ... 24 months the number of transistors in microchips approximately doubles. This observation was carried out on the basis of the production of memory chips or simply memory. Based on this, Gordon Moore concluded that in the near future the power of computing devices will increase exponentially. And this law is still valid.

In 2006, Intel released a processor containing 1 billion transistors, and recently created a Tukwila processor containing more than two billion transistors. This fully confirms the validity of Moore's law. Electronic technology is developing much faster and more dynamically than all other areas of science and technology. Scientists estimate that if the aircraft industry developed with such a dynamic, a modern Boeing 767 could fly around the globe in just 20 minutes, spending no more than 20 liters of fuel, and at the same time cost no more than $ 500.

All the mentioned transistors are made by nanotechnology, which is now widely heard. But even in this design it is still transistors. Next will be a little talk about transistors.

Brief Description of Transistors

Let's try to imagine a modern world without transistors. Most likely, all life will stop: the phones will shut up, the TVs will go out, the cars will stop, the heat, water and electricity will disappear in the houses. After all, the operation of all the mentioned devices is controlled by all kinds of electronic circuits, the basis of which is a transistor. What kind of magical device is this transistor?

Bipolar transistors

The first bipolar transistor was invented back in 1947 by American scientists - physicists W. Shockley, D. Bardin and U.Brattain, who at that time were employees of the Bell Labs lab. The birth date of the transistor should be considered December 23, 1947, when the official presentation of the new device was held.

As happens with many outstanding inventions, the transistor was not immediately noticed: only 9 years after the mentioned date, its creators were awarded the Nobel Prize. One of the founders of the transistor, John Bardin, shortly afterwards was once again awarded the Nobel Prize. This time for the creation of the theory of superconductivity.

At first, the new electronic device did not have its name. By analogy with an electron lamp - a triode, it was called a semiconductor triode or crystalline triode. The common name for the transistor was invented by a colleague of the scientists mentioned above, John Pierce. The word was made up of two words: transfer - transfer and resistor - resistance. Indeed, in fact, a control signal applied to one of the electrodes (base) changes the resistance between two other electrodes (collector, emitter) of the transistor. If these electrodes are connected to the open circuit of the power supply, it becomes possible to control any load. It can be a loudspeaker, relay coil, light bulb, the next transistor stage and much more.

Already in 1956, the first portable transistor radio was created, which allows you to listen to music not only at home, but anywhere. When using radio tubes in receivers, this could not even be imagined.

Invention of new technology

This first experience of miniaturization of radio equipment pushed talented inquisitive minds to action, and two years after the creation of the first transistor receiver, the American scientists Jack Kilby and Robert Neuss took a huge new step in the development of semiconductor technology. The technology developed by them made it possible to combine several transistors into an integrated circuit at once. This invention introduced Robert Noyce to Gordon Moore, and already in 1968 they created Intel Corporation, which was the beginning of the production of modern computers.

Field effect transistors

It should be remembered that long before the invention of a bipolar current-controlled bipolar transistor, a patent was obtained for a field effect transistor. The principles of operation of field-effect transistors were dealt with by the Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925, and already in 1928 received a German patent. And in 1934, the first field effect transistor was patented by the German physicist Oscar Hale.

The physics of field effect transistors is somewhat simpler than bipolar, so they were developed much earlier. Their work is based on the simple effect of an electrostatic field; these transistors are also called MOS transistors. Despite the simple device compared to a bipolar transistor, the first MOS transistors appeared only in 1960, although now these transistors form the basis of all computer technology. Only in the nineties of the last century, field effect transistors began to dominate bipolar.

Analog and Digital Chips

In the process of creating transistors, it turned out that transistors can operate in linear and key modes. Linear mode allowed amplification of electrical signals. But one transistor cannot give a sufficiently large gain, so operational amplifiers (op amps) were developed. They got this name because they were used in analog computers, where they performed mathematical operations.

Now analog computers are no longer there, but the op-amps have remained, and are successfully used in various electronic devices. There are typical schemes for switching on an op-amp; therefore, the parameters of cascades made on an op-amp are highly repeatable. For example, the cascade gain is determined only by external resistors, and can be set very accurately.

Therefore, if you decide to start studying the basics of electronics, then the use of op-amps can greatly simplify this task. On operational amplifiers, a lot has been written in books, as well as in articles on the Internet, there are many different designs.

Key Transistor Operation used in digital circuits, they are also called logical, because they perform logical operations, or operations Boolean algebra. Once, it was on these microcircuits that computers were created. Such machines were very bulky, slow, energy consumption is simply immense. These computers are a thing of the past, and all kinds of relatively simple devices are made on digital circuits by radio amateurs. It is these microcircuits that can be recommended for independent study of electronics, for conducting the first experiments.

Conclusion

And now to summarize, recall the title of the article, “Why electricians are not always friends with electronics.” If you do not take into account simple laziness, then the reason for hostility to electronics may be an elementary fear of not understanding something or ruining something.

This article is just written in order to defeat this fear, gain faith in one's own strengths, and force one to try oneself in a new quality. Electronics is contagious, in the good sense of the word. First, we’ll master the transistors, then move on to digital logic, and there it’s not far from the microcontrollers. So, comrades electricians, be brave, do not be afraid of electronics, make friends with it!

Boris Aladyshkin