‘Electronics’ is quite a familiar word in our daily life. We see around us innumerable electronic gadgets for domestic use and many scientific, engineering, technical, and vocational teaching courses of different academic levels related to electronics. Actually electronics evolved as a part of modern physics almost a century ago and depicted significant contribution to modern science, technology, economy and society.

There is no dearth of excellent reference books on different aspects of electronics. Nevertheless, the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines of Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS) curriculum and Learning Outcomes based Curriculum Framework (LOCF), prescribing two full papers of electronics in the core course of undergraduate physics motivated this author to write something on electronics exclusively for young students who have just passed the high school and entered the higher studies. The outcome is this book; Electronics: Analog and Digital, prepared mainly for physics honours/equivalent courses.

The topics of electronic devices, circuits and systems are broadly classified into two categories: analog and digital, as is also specified in the CBCS curriculum. Maintaining the recommended topics, the subject matters are reorganized so as to facilitate the students.

The first introductory chapter outlines briefly the evolution, significance and widespread applications of electronics. Since semiconductors take major part in the fabrication of electronic devices, the subject learning starts with the basic properties and types of semiconductors, electrons and holes, concepts of energy band and effective mass and current transport phenomena (Chapter 2).

A fundamental structure in electronics is p–n junction. Chapter 3 explains its rectification property, forward and reverse biasing and the corresponding energy band diagrams. It also elucidates how the same p–n junction with constructional changes can give rise to different devices, such as rectifier diode, Zener diode and light-emitting diode. The important applications of diode as half-wave, full-wave and bridge rectifier, clipper and clamper are presented in Chapter 4.

The bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is a very remarkable device in electronics. It is the basic building block for many analog and digital circuits. So the book dedicates four chapters on different aspects of transistor. Chapter 5 contains the construction and working principle of n–p–n and p–n–p transistors, the amplifying action of transistor and detailed explanations of common-emitter, common-base and common-collector configurations.