Nearly every piece of technology you use—from smartphones to computers—relies on one revolutionary component: the transistor.

This video explains how transistors work as switches and amplifiers in electronic circuits. Transistors control the flow of ...

Share on Facebook (opens in a new window) Share on X (opens in a new window) Share on Reddit (opens in a new window) Share on Hacker News (opens in a new window) Share on Flipboard (opens in a new ...

One of the joys of writing up the entries for the 2025 Component Abuse Challenge has come in finding all the different alternative uses for the humble transistor. This building block of all modern ...

Perovskites have received a lot of attention as semiconductor materials for solar cells because they’re efficient, inexpensive, and easy to make. But designing transistors, the fundamental component ...

Researchers have reported a black phosphorus transistor that can be used as an alternative ultra-low power switch. A research team developed a thickness-controlled black phosphorous tunnel ...

Fast switching: the Hybrid Photonics Labs at Skoltech where the new optical transistor was created. (Courtesy: Skoltech) A new optical transistor has been designed by researchers in Russia, ...

OK, so I have an old project laptop with an IDE/PATA/slim-ATAPI optical drive bay, into which I have inserted a SATA drive caddy with a bridge board. The thing is, the caddy doesn't transfer the drive ...

For our 2025 Component Abuse Challenge there have been a set of entries which merely use a component for a purpose it wasn’t quite intended, and another which push misuse of a part into ...

A Planet Analog article, “2N3904: Why use a 60-year-old transistor?” by Bill Schweber, inspired some interest in this old transistor and how it’s commonly used, and if any uncommon uses might exist.