A power semiconductor device is a semiconductor device used as a switch or rectifier in power electronics; a switch-mode power supply is an example. Such a device is also called a power device or, when used in an integrated circuit, a power IC.
A power semiconductor device is usually used in "commutation mode" (i.e., it is either on or off), and therefore has a design optimized for such usage; it should usually not be used in linear operation.
Read more about Power Semiconductor Device: History, Common Power Devices, Common Power Semiconductor Devices, Parameters of Power Semiconductor Devices
Famous quotes containing the words power and/or device:
“International relations is security, it’s trade relations, it’s power games. It’s not good-and-bad. But what I saw in Yugoslavia was pure evil. Not ethnic hatred—that’s only like a label. I really had a feeling there that I am observing unleashed human evil ...”
—Natasha Dudinska (b. c. 1967)
“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)