VLSI_notes

VLSI

Very Large Scale Integration, a technology for integrating thousands of transistors on a single chip.

MOSFET

Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor, a type of transistor used in digital and analog circuits.

BJT

Bipolar Junction Transistor, a type of transistor that uses both electron and hole charge carriers.

PN Junction

A junction formed by the contact of p-type and n-type semiconductors, used in diodes.

Op-Amp

Operational Amplifier, a high-gain voltage amplifier with differential inputs.

Depletion Mode

A mode of operation in which the conductive channel of a MOSFET is reduced or completely removed when a voltage is applied.

Enhancement Mode

A mode of operation in which a MOSFET is turned on by applying a positive gate voltage, creating a conductive channel.

Feedback

A process in which the output of a system is fed back into the system as input to control its operation.

Intrinsic Semiconductor

A pure semiconductor without any significant dopants, typically silicon.

Extrinsic Semiconductor

A semiconductor that has been doped with impurities to change its electrical properties.

P-type Semiconductor

A type of semiconductor that has been doped to create an abundance of holes (positive charge carriers).

N-type Semiconductor

A type of semiconductor that has been doped to create an abundance of free electrons (negative charge carriers).

LED

Light Emitting Diode, a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it.

Digital Logic Gate

An electronic circuit that operates on one or more binary inputs to produce a single binary output.

DrMOSFET

A device used in low-voltage applications, combining the features of a MOSFET with low on-resistance.

Capacitance

The ability of a system to store charge per unit voltage; important in the context of gate capacitance in MOSFETs.

Voltage Threshold (VTh)

The minimum gate-to-source voltage (Vgs) that is needed to create a conductive path between the drain and source of a MOSFET.

Inverter

A basic digital logic circuit that converts a binary input to its opposite output.

Crosstalk

An undesirable coupling between separate signals, which can cause interference in circuits.

Current Mirror

A circuit that copies the current flowing in one active device into another, maintaining a constant output current.

Saturation Region

The operating region of a MOSFET where it conducts the maximum current, and the drain current is relatively constant.

Channel Length Modulation

A phenomenon in MOSFETs where the effective length of the channel decreases with increasing drain-source voltage.

Subthreshold Conduction

The phenomenon where small amounts of current flow through an MOSFET when it is below its threshold voltage.