EE40
Introduction to Microelectronic Circuits
NEWS!!!

Final Grades

INTRODUCTION


Dear Students,
Welcome to EE40: Introduction to Microelectronic circuits Summer 2004 session!!!
This web site will be your main reference for the class. Here you will find all the information you need.

Electrical Engineering (EE) is a relatively old discipline even if it's not the oldest engineering field. It took a long time to discover electricity even if some effects were already known by Greeks as far back as 600BC.
The credit for generating electric current on a practical scale goes to the famous English scientist, Michael Faraday. Faraday was greatly interested in the invention of the electromagnet, but his brilliant mind took earlier experiments still further. If electricity could produce magnetism, why couldn't magnetism produce electricity.
In 1831, Faraday found the solution. Electricity could be produced through magnetism by motion. He discovered that when a magnet was moved inside a coil of copper wire, a tiny electric current flows through the wire.
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) is well know for his extension and mathematical formulation of Michael Faraday's theories of electricity and magnetic lines of force. In his research, conducted between 1864 and 1873, Maxwell showed that a few relatively simple mathematical equations could express the behavior of electric and magnetic fields and their interrelated nature; that is, an oscillating electric charge produces an electromagnetic field. These four partial differential equations first appeared in fully developed form in Electricity and Magnetism (1873). Since known as Maxwell's equations they are one of the great achievements of 19th-century physics.

From those days, a lot of achievements have signed the history of Electrical Engineering. After the invention of the transistor (John Bardeen,Walter Brattain and William Shockley, 1939-1947), Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce came up with the idea of monolithic integrated circuit (1958) that made integration possible.

Today's chips integrate tens of millions of transistors plus on-chip memory, making engineers job harder and harder.

This class will first introduce you to the analysis of linear circuits using classical techniques like node equations. You will use basic components like resistors, capacitors, voltage generators etc. which by the way are convenient abstraction of Maxwell's equations.
Then, we will move to semiconductor devices like diodes and transistors.
Finally we will rise the level of abstraction and talk about logic gates.
The main purpose of the class is to understand some basic notions related to microelectronic circuits but moreover to build a solid foundation for your future research in this exciting and always evolving field.

Alessandro Pinto