Examples for Active and Passive components

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guruteja

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Please give me some examples for active and passive components and through that differentiate them in a very easy manner.
 

Some passive devices:
Resistors, capacitors, inductors.

Some active devices:
BJTs, JFETs, MOSFETs, Valves.

IMHO, the difference is that active devices can amplify a signal, but passive devices cannot. So if you want to build an amplifier or oscillator, you need to use an active device.

By that definition, ordinary diodes such as 1n4148 or 1n4007 are passive devices as well.

There was a discussion about this before and some people said that diodes are active devices. They had different definitions for "active" and "passive".
 
godfreyl said:
There was a discussion about this before and some people said that diodes are active devices. They had different definitions for "active" and "passive".
Click to expand...

The definition for a diode being a active component comes from the idea that it needs an
external influence ie. a power source to operate, having an on-voltage and all. Secondly,
most passive devices stays the same when viewing a small signal model of the component
(resistor looks like a resistor etc.), where your actives look much different (dependent
current and voltage sources).
 

Baas Rietrot said:
The definition for a diode being a active component comes from the idea that it needs an external influence ie. a power source to operate, having an on-voltage and all.....
Click to expand...
That pretty much boils down to saying that diodes are "active" components because they're non-linear. I'm not really keen on that idea but I don't think it's worth arguing about.

Probably the closest we can get to a "correct" answer is that different people have different ideas about what's correct.
 

Not trying to argue, just gave the definition/explanation I know. I think the diode is actually in a bit of a grey area.
 

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