Printed circuit board in the context of TO-252

Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other electrically charged particles. It is a subfield of physics and electrical engineering which uses active devices such as transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits to control and amplify the flow of electric current and to convert it from one form to another, such as from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) or from analog signals to digital signals. Electronics is often contrasted with electrical power engineering, which focuses on generation, transmission, and distribution of electric power rather than signal processing or device level control.

Electronic devices have significantly influenced the development of many aspects of modern society, such as telecommunications, entertainment, education, health care, industry, and security. The main driving force behind the advancement of electronics is the semiconductor industry, which continually produces ever-more sophisticated electronic devices and circuits in response to global demand. The semiconductor industry is one of the global economy's largest and most profitable industries, with annual revenues exceeding $481 billion in 2018. The electronics industry also encompasses other branches that rely on electronic devices and systems, such as e-commerce, which generated over $29 trillion in online sales in 2017. Practical electronic systems commonly combine analog and digital techniques, using analog front ends with digital processing.

A camera module is an image sensor integrated with a lens, control electronics,and an interface like CSI, Ethernet or plain raw low-voltage differential signaling.

Soldering (US: /ˈsɒdərɪŋ/; UK: /ˈsoʊldərɪŋ/) is a process of joining two metal surfaces together using a filler metal called solder. The soldering process involves heating the surfaces to be joined and melting the solder, which is then allowed to cool and solidify, creating a strong and durable joint.

Soldering is commonly used in the electronics industry for the manufacture and repair of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and other electronic components. It is also used in plumbing and metalwork, as well as in the manufacture of jewelry and other decorative items.

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking principles to organize this body of knowledge. The individual outcome of such efforts, an engineered system, can be defined as a combination of components that work in synergy to collectively perform a useful function.

Issues such as requirements engineering, reliability, logistics, coordination of different teams, testing and evaluation, maintainability, and many other disciplines, aka "ilities", necessary for successful system design, development, implementation, and ultimate decommission become more difficult when dealing with large or complex projects. Systems engineering deals with work processes, optimization methods, and risk management tools in such projects. It overlaps technical and human-centered disciplines such as industrial engineering, production systems engineering, process systems engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, production engineering, control engineering, software engineering, electrical engineering, cybernetics, aerospace engineering, organizational studies, civil engineering and project management. Systems engineering ensures that all likely aspects of a project or system are considered and integrated into a whole.

An industrial robot is a robot system used for manufacturing. Industrial robots are automated, programmable and capable of movement on three or more axes.

Typical applications of robots include welding, painting, assembly, disassembly, pick and place for printed circuit boards, packaging and labeling, palletizing, product inspection, and testing; all accomplished with high endurance, speed, and precision. They can assist in material handling.

An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electrical circuit. For a circuit to be referred to as electronic, rather than electrical, generally at least one active component must be present. The combination of components and wires allows various simple and complex operations to be performed: signals can be amplified, computations can be performed, and data can be moved from one place to another.

Circuits can be constructed of discrete components connected by individual pieces of wire, but today it is much more common to create interconnections by photolithographic techniques on a laminated substrate (a printed circuit board or PCB) and solder the components to these interconnections to create a finished circuit. In an integrated circuit or IC, the components and interconnections are formed on the same substrate, typically a semiconductor such as doped silicon or (less commonly) gallium arsenide.

Surface-mount technology (SMT), originally called planar mounting, is a method in which the electrical components are mounted directly onto the surface of a printed circuit board (PCB). An electrical component mounted in this manner is referred to as a surface-mount device (SMD). In industry, this approach has largely replaced through-hole technology construction method of fitting components, in large part because SMT allows for increased manufacturing automation which reduces cost and improves quality. It also allows for more components to fit on a given area of substrate. Both technologies can be used on the same board, with the through-hole technology often used for components not suitable for surface mounting such as large transformers and heat-sinked power semiconductors.

An SMT component is usually smaller than its through-hole counterpart because it has either smaller leads or no leads at all. It may have short pins or leads of various styles, flat contacts, a matrix of solder balls (BGAs), or terminations on the body of the component.

The electronics industry is the industry that produces electronic devices. It emerged in the 20th century and is today one of the largest global industries. Contemporary society uses a vast array of electronic devices that are built in factories operated by the industry, which are almost always partially automated.

Electronic products are primarily assembled from metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) transistors and integrated circuits, the latter principally by photolithography and often on printed circuit boards.

Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work together in a design flow that chip designers use to design and analyze entire semiconductor chips. Since a modern semiconductor chip can have billions of components, EDA tools are essential for their design. A complete set of technologies are integrated in EDA tools, which have been expanded to software, hardware and design methodologies (such as through design services), this article in particular describes EDA specifically with respect to integrated circuits (ICs).

A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply, motherboard (a printed circuit board with a microprocessor as the central processing unit, memory, bus, certain peripherals and other electronic components), disk storage (usually one or more hard disk drives, solid-state drives, optical disc drives, and in early models floppy disk drives); a keyboard and mouse for input; and a monitor, speakers, and, often, a printer for output. The case may be oriented horizontally or vertically and placed either underneath, beside, or on top of a desk.

Desktop computers with their cases oriented vertically are referred to as towers. As the majority of cases offered since the mid 1990s are in this form factor, the term desktop has been retronymically used to refer to modern cases offered in the traditional horizontal orientation.

Electroplating, also known as electrochemical deposition or electrodeposition, is a process for producing a metal coating on a solid substrate through the reduction of cations of that metal by means of a direct electric current. The part to be coated acts as the cathode (negative electrode) of an electrolytic cell; the electrolyte is a solution of a salt whose cation is the metal to be coated, and the anode (positive electrode) is usually either a block of that metal, or of some inert conductive material. The current is provided by an external power supply.

Electroplating is widely used in industry and decorative arts to improve the surface qualities of objects—such as resistance to abrasion and corrosion, lubricity, reflectivity, electrical conductivity, or appearance. It is used to build up thickness on undersized or worn-out parts and to manufacture metal plates with complex shape, a process called electroforming. It is used to deposit copper and other conductors in forming printed circuit boards and copper interconnects in integrated circuits. It is also used to purify metals such as copper.

The Double Decawatt Package, D2PAK, SOT404 or DDPAK, standardized as TO-263, is a semiconductor package type intended for surface mounting on circuit boards. The TO-263 is designed by Motorola. They are similar to the earlier TO-220-style packages intended for high power dissipation but lack the extended metal tab and mounting hole, while representing a larger version of the TO-252, also known as DPAK, SMT package. As with all SMT packages, the pins on a D2PAK are bent to lie against the PCB surface. The TO-263 can have 3 to 7 terminals.

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  A pair of MOSFETs in the surface-mount package D2PAK.
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  A TO-220 package compared to a D2PAK package.

Solid-state electronics are semiconductor electronics: electronic equipment that use semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes and integrated circuits (ICs). The term is also used as an adjective for devices in which semiconductor electronics that have no moving parts replace devices with moving parts, such as the solid-state relay, in which transistor switches are used in place of a moving-arm electromechanical relay, or the solid-state drive (SSD), a type of semiconductor memory used in computers to replace hard disk drives, which store data on a rotating disk.

In the context of integrated circuits, a die is a small block of semiconducting material on which a given functional circuit is fabricated. Typically, integrated circuits are produced in large batches on a single wafer of electronic-grade silicon (EGS) or other semiconductor (such as GaAs) through processes such as photolithography. The wafer is cut (diced) into many pieces, each containing one copy of the circuit. Each of these pieces is called a die.

There are three commonly used plural forms: dice, dies, and die. To simplify handling and integration onto a printed circuit board, most dies are packaged in various forms.

Die singulation, also called wafer dicing, is the process in semiconductor device fabrication by which dies are separated from a finished wafer of semiconductor. It can involve scribing and breaking, mechanical sawing (normally with a machine called a dicing saw) or laser cutting. All methods are typically automated to ensure precision and accuracy.Following the dicing process the individual silicon chips may be encapsulated into chip carriers which are then suitable for use in building electronic devices such as computers, etc.

During dicing, wafers are typically mounted on dicing tape which has a sticky backing that holds the wafer on a thin sheet metal frame. Dicing tape has different properties depending on the dicing application. UV curable tapes are used for smaller sizes and non-UV dicing tape for larger die sizes. Dicing saws may use a dicing blade with diamond particles, rotating at 30,000 RPM and cooled with deionized water. Once a wafer has been diced, the pieces left on the dicing tape are referred to as die, dice or dies. Each will be packaged in a suitable package or placed directly on a printed circuit board substrate as a "bare die". The areas that have been cut or sawn away, called die streets, are typically about 75 micrometres (0.003 inch) wide. Once a wafer has been diced, the die will stay on the dicing tape until they are extracted by die-handling equipment, such as a die bonder or die sorter, further in the electronics assembly process.