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When used as a switch, a transistor is usually driven completely on (saturation) or completely off (cutoff). There are a few kinds of switching circuits though (e.g. ECL) that avoid saturation/cutoff to obtain faster speed, these operate on a fixed constant current and switch it through one of two transistors.

When used as an amplifier it is biased so that it operates in a linear, or near-linear, part of its characteristic curve so that the output faithfully copies the input.

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10y ago
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13y ago

A: the switching refers to generating '1' '0' but they can be used to switch a load off on. basically the transistor diodes are forced to forward bias at that time both diodes are forward conducting and current can flow both direction therefore the term switch

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12y ago

Amplification is the process of linearly increasing the amplitude of an electrical signal.

- A transistor can act as an amplifier directly using the gain, b.

- Keep in mind that when a transistor is biased in the active (linear) region, the BE junction has a low resistance due to forward bias and the BC junction has a high resistance due to reverse bias.

i) DC and AC quantities

- Amplifier circuits have both ac and dc quantities.

- Capital letters are used will be used for both ac and dc currents.

- Subscript will be capital for dc quantities.

- Subscript will be lowercase for ac quantities.

ii) Transistor amplification

- A transistor amplifies current because the collector current is equal to the base current multiplied by the current gain, b.

- Base current (IB) is small compared to IC and IE.

- Thus, IC is almost equal to IE.

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13y ago

A transistor can be used as an amplifier because the electrons in the base are multiplied by a gain factor to give the collector current.

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Q: What is the difference between a transistor being use as a switch and as an amplifier?
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Why a transistor is used as a amplifier and switch?

transistor has 2 output 1 and 0 so can be used as a switch


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A transistor is an electronic component. By itself it has little use. An amplifier is a complete, functional circuit, generally made up of several components. A transistor can be a component part of an amplifier, however an amplifier may be constructed without any transistors (using vacuum tubes instead, for instance).


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What is the difference between a switch and an amplifier?

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What are modes of biasing a transistor?

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What is the difference between SL100 and CL100 transistor?

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