Discrete devices: Fabrication and processing techniques, borrowed from LSI technology, play major roles in new component designs

Materials processing and fabrication techniques, some of them similar to those used in large-scale integration, have made possible the production of denser, smaller, and faster components during the past year. Among the components were high-frequency power-switching devices [see “Switching lots of watts at high speeds,” by B.J. Baliga, Spectrum, December 1981, pp. 43-481, microwave devices for communications, solid-state relays for applications formerly performed by electromechanical relays, and isolation amplifier transformers.