difference between mosfet and cmos
MOSFET is a transistor technology. It is an extention of the field-effect transistor (FET).
As with bipolar transistor, where you have NPN and PNP, you can have two kind of FET (P-channel and N-channel).
When creating integrated circuits, using mainly P-channel MOSFET transistors, the device is called 'PMOS'. Similarely, when using mainly N-channel MOSFET, the device is called 'NMOS'.
CMOS are the most common devices, which use an equal mix of P-channel and N-channel MOS, and stand for 'complementary MOS'.
Above, the term 'MOS' is in face a short for 'MOSFET'.
So, MOSFET is a transistor technology, while CMOS is simply a way of designing chips.
MOS stand for 'metal-oxide-silicon'. The MOSFET differt from the plain 'FET' in the fact that the gate is isolated from the source-drain channel by a oxide-silicon (glass) layer, thus, being electrically isolated.
The adventages:
- This is one the main reason why MOS transistors use very little current.
The disadvantages:
- To work efficiently, the oxide layer have to be very small. So small that it can only resist to a difference of voltage of about 30V. It is not an issue since most devices operates on 5V or less, but this is why the MOSFET transistors are very sensitive to static discharges (a simple static discharge are usually in the order of hundred to thousunds of volts). While those static discharges are certenly not fatal for a human, it can well be for a MOS!