Hardware development engineers are surely well familiar with basic electronic components such as chip resistors, chip capacitors, diodes, and transistors. However, for engineers with insufficient experience in circuit project development, digital transistors and composite diodes, which are widely used, are rarely known to them. The reason is that university textbooks and classroom experiments rarely involve these components. The existence of these phenomena makes us sigh, and it is necessary to introduce relevant content about digital transistors to friends, including the advantages of their circuit design.
1,Digital Transistors
The so-called digital transistor is an electronic component that integrates the base voltage-dividing and current-limiting resistors with the transistor. It replaces the circuit composed of two resistors and one transistor.
2,Circuit Advantages
Circuit diagram for comparison between digital transistors and ordinary transistors.
2.1 Simple Design: The circuit schematic is simplified, which is particularly precious for engineers in the PCB Layout process, considering the valuable space of the PCB.
2.2 Reduced Cost: For a hardware development engineer, completing the circuit function of a project is the most basic task; for an excellent senior hardware development engineer, they also need to pay attention to the project's design costs, such as R&D personnel expenses, component BOM costs, PCB production and SMT processing fees, etc. Compared with ordinary transistors, digital transistors can well reduce the component BOM costs and SMT processing fees. The reason is that a digital transistor has only 3 SMT solder joints, while an ordinary transistor with two resistors has 7 SMT solder joints.
2.3 Circuit Reliability: As we all know, the fewer components and chips used in a circuit system, the higher its reliability, and the lower the probability of system failure.
2.4 Logical Function: In circuit design and application, digital transistors are mostly used in their cut-off and saturation states, that is, the transistor is in the off and on states. At this time, digital transistors can realize the electrical function of a logical NOT gate.To better serve friends, combined with our years of R&D experience, commonly used digital transistor models include the DTA114 series and DTC114 series.
When selecting models, attention should be paid to the resistance values and proportional relationship of R1 and R2, because the resistance relationship of these two resistors affects the circuit performance of the digital transistor, and engineers need to choose according to the actual circuit project application.
