Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET)

Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET):

The metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) is one of the cornerstones of modern semiconductor technology. The general structure is a lightly doped p-type substrate, into which two regions, the source and the drain, both of heavily doped n-type semiconductor have been embedded.The symbol n+ is used to denote this heavy doping.

In MOSFETs, a voltage on the oxide-insulated gate electrode can induce a conducting channel between the two other contacts called source and drain. The channel can be of n-type or p-type (see article on semiconductor devices), and is accordingly called an nMOSFET or a pMOSFET (also commonly nMOS, pMOS). It is by far the most common transistor in both digital and analog circuits, though the bipolar junction transistor was at one time much more common.

The 'metal' in the name is now often a misnomer because the previously metal gate material is now often a layer of polysilicon (polycrystalline silicon). Aluminium had been the gate material until the mid 1970s, when polysilicon became dominant, due to its capability to form self-aligned gates. Metallic gates are regaining popularity, since it is difficult to increase the speed of operation of transistors without metal gates.

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