News and New Products

New transistors and diodes? Is this a joke?

By Bill Schweber -- EDN, 5/12/2005

In these days of ICs with millions of transistors, the discrete transistor or diode may seem like a throwback to the early days of the semiconductor industry more than 50 years ago. But a large and critical demand still exists for these basic, inexpensive devices in consumer and other products. According to Anne Spitza, manager of public relations for On Semiconductor, the market for these devices was around 200 billion units last year.

The latest offerings, a family of more than 50 such devices from On Semiconductor, take the packaging to an even smaller size, the SOT-723. This package style measures 1.2×1.2 mm with a 0.5 mm height, corresponding to a 1.44-mm² footprint, which is 84% less than the ubiquitous SOT-23 (Picture). In addition, the vendor claims these smaller packages offer improvement of as much as 20% in power dissipation and 12% in thermal resistance. The digital and bipolar transistors, as well as small-signal switching and Schottky diodes, are priced at 1.6 cents to 4 cents (10,000).

On Semiconductor, www.onsemi.com.