Resistors : theory of operation, behavior and safety regulations

This book is based on six chapters, which belong to one of the three following topics: overview of resistors technologies, design of new resistors using advanced technologies, and some applications of resistors. In more detail, the first chapter presents an overview of thin-film resistors technology, their fabrication and their applications. Some new implementations are also shown along with other perspectives in relation to thin-film technology. After presenting an overview of one of the resistors types, the next three chapters examine the theory of manufacturing and of operation of other resistor types. The last part of this book regroups two applications based on resistors. The first application, presented in chapter five, shows the number theory and resistor networks and the way to find the order if a set of 'n' equal resistors are placed in a series or in parallel. The second application is a very recent one. It shows a network of resistors and capacitors, placed in gamma arrangement and calculated in a way to have a fractional order system. Such systems can be applied to several engineering domains but, in this chapter, we have treated the electrical domain only.Also, the tolerance of the resistors was emphasised and the influence of the resistors values on the system behaviour was also studied. In summary, this book presents an overview of resistors technologies used nowadays, some advanced technologies of thick resistors, carbon nanotube resistors and discrete resistors, and their applications.