In electronics, the Darlington transistor (often called a Darlington pair) is a semiconductor device which combines two bipolar transistors in a single device so that the current amplified by the first is amplified further by the second. This gives a high current gain (written β or hFE), and takes less space than two discrete transistors in the same configuration. Integrated packaged devices are available, but it is still common also to use two separate transistors.
The Darlington configuration was invented by Bell Laboratories engineer Sidney Darlington. He patented the idea of having two or three transistors on a single chip, but not that of an arbitrary number (which might have covered all modern integrated circuits).
A similar configuration but with transistors of opposite type (NPN and PNP) is the Sziklai pair, sometimes called the "complementary Darlington". |
