Microelectronic Circuits

by Adel S. Sedra, Kenneth C. Smith

Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195323033

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Book Description

This market-leading textbook continues its standard of excellence and innovation built on the solid pedagogical foundation that instructors expect from Adel S. Sedra and Kenneth C. Smith. All material in the sixth edition of Microelectronic Circuits is thoroughly updated to reflect changes in technology, CMOS technology in particular. These technological changes have shaped the book's organization and topical coverage, making it the most current resource available for teaching tomorrow's engineers how to analyze and design electronic circuits.

New to this Edition:

• Digital Circuits Early and Modular: New chapters in Part III: Digital Integrated Circuits make it easier to teach digital topics to computer engineers in a single-semester course.
• New Chapter 13: CMOS Digital Logic Circuits lays the foundation for all digital material.
• Frequency response in a separate section: Frequency response is now condensed into a single chapter (Ch. 9), rather than being integrated within other topics.
• Streamlined and Signposted: Shorter, more modular chapters are easier to customize to any class. Visual cues and icons make the book easier to navigate. Explanations to the reader of why to read sections-and how multiple techniques might be used-are much more prominent. A new icon clearly marks topics that can be skipped on a first reading, while the student is grasping the basics, or that look ahead to advanced industrial applications.
• Semiconductor primer in a separate chapter: For students who have not taken a prior course in Semiconductor Device Physics, Chapter 3 concisely covers the basics necessary to study Microelectronics. (Students who have had a device physics course will also find this a handy refresher.)
• Lab-on-a-Disc: Offers complete simulations with activities, investigations, and directions to students for examples in the chapters and study problems from the ends of chapters. Simulated in MultisimTM and PSpice®. Also includes full student versions of MultisimTM and PSpice® so students can simulate their own activities and designs.
• New Technical Coverage, including: a unique development of cascoding techniques (Ch 7); modern techniques for the design of BJT op amps (Ch 12); and deep submicron design and technology scaling (Ch 13). Please see the Preface for a complete list of the exciting new additions.

Ancillaries:

• Instructor: [Note: Instructor's Resource CD is bound in to ISM-ISBN 9780195340303]
• Instructor's Solutions Manual contains typed solutions to all in-text exercises and end-of-chapter problems.
• PowerPoint Overheads on CD contain all of the figures with captions, plus summary tables, from the main text.

Student:

• In-text CD contains SPICE circuit simulation exercises and lessons, and a free student version of two SPICE simulators: OrCAD PSpice and Electronics Workbench Multisim.
• Companion website www.sedrasmith.org http://www.sedrasmith.org features SPICE models and links to industry and academic sites.

About the Author

Adel S. Sedra is Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo and former Provost of the University of Toronto.

Kenneth C. Smith (KC) is Professor Emeritus in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Information Studies at the University of Toronto.

Customer Reviews

The widely available paperback international edition (6th ed; ISBN13:978-0199738519) is sufficiently dissimilar to the hardback domestic edition that students should be warned against the purchase. This is the first time i've found an international edition that'd been edited in this manner. A few of the chapters are merged and reordered, and the problem sets are smaller and reordered. The exercises themselves are the same for the most part, but without a copy of the domestic text, a student is unable to know which to work for a class. If you're purchasing the book for your own reading, this really won't matter (though fwiw a paperback this ridiculously big seems like it'd be a pain to shelve or carry)

I'm just giving it three stars because this isn't really a review.

REVISION: It's been a few semesters and i've run through some other books in the interim. To make a brief review of the book itself, let me just say that i keep this one at my desk as a reference. The material is very complete and helps fill the gaps where other books have left off.

I'll start off with the fact that I read this book in lieu of going to class, because my professor essentially taught from the slides that came with the teacher's edition.

First, the good points:

• It's a relatively easy read, compared to many textbooks. It's not impossible to understand, given that you've got a strong algebra background.
• There are many examples to help with much of the text, and they go step by step through solving them.

Next, the bad:

• It's a very dry read, and with between 50-100 pages per chapter (They get longer as you go further into the book), a little humor now and then would help keep my attention better.
• Also, they skip some algebraic steps in their derivations, and so I had to sit there for more time than necessary to figure out where exactly they were getting this equation from, despite them telling me which equations they used to get it. Don't get me wrong: I am very good at math, but when you skip 3 or 4 steps in between, it's going to make me do a double-take.
• There are a lot of examples, but not enough. The end-chapter homework problems are much more advanced then their basic examples, and assume you understand things that you may not even realize applied in certain problems. Perhaps a supplementary text full of strictly examples would be a good addition to this one.

I'm only on chapter 1 but I really do feel this is one really good book. I have several reasons.

1. The authors give an high level description of electronic circuits in Chapter 1 itself. It builds a lot of intuition on Amplifiers right at the beginning. I would guess that the remaining chapters, fill in the gaps and get into the details.
2. There are Practice Problems embedded within each Chapter. I love textbooks which follow this format (Hayt & Sadiku do this in their books on electromagnetics and circuit analysis too). This way, I can test something I learn right after instead of waiting to finish the Chapter. This helps me cement in the concepts right away.
3. Answers to almost ALL problems - Yep! Almost everything is there.
4. A lot of learning happens in the problems. These aren't just drills to get used to the mechanics. Many of the problems do a little bit of hand-holding to help learn why the problem was designed that way and what it intends to reveal.
5. The design problems are really really engaging!

The authors have simplified a lot of things without sacrificing too much of rigour (they do provide references to advanced device physics). This book is also non-sleep inducing. The only drawback, I feel is that I don't think I could use this for a first course in electronic circuits. The book would have been quite intimidating if I had not seen this subject before. This probably why there are a significant number of negative reviews.