What is the difference between electronic components and electronic devices?

Is there any difference between electronic components and devices? Some people do distinguish electronic components into components and devices from different perspectives. 

Distinguish from the perspective of manufacturing

1. Components: Electronic products that do not change the molecular structure of the material during manufacture are called components. 
2. Device: The product whose molecular structure is changed during manufacturing is called device.

However, the manufacture of modern electronic components involves many physical and chemical processes, and many electronic functional materials are inorganic non-metallic materials, which are always accompanied by changes in crystal structure during the manufacturing process. Obviously, this distinction is unscientific.

From the perspective of structural units 

1. Components: There is only a single structure mode, and products with a single performance characteristic are called components. 
2. Device: a combination of two or more components, forming a product that is different from the performance characteristics of a single component is called a device.

According to this distinction, resistors, capacitors, etc. belong to components, but the names of resistors and capacitors are confused with the concept of "devices", and with the emergence of array resistor-capacitor components such as resistors and capacitors, this distinction method has become irrelevant. reasonable.

Distinguish from the response to the circuit

The individual parts through which the current can produce frequency amplitude changes or change the flow direction are called devices, otherwise they are called components. For example, triodes, thyristors and integrated circuits are devices, while resistors, capacitors, and inductors are components. This distinction is similar to the internationally used classification of active components and passive components.

In fact, it is difficult to clearly distinguish between components and devices, so they are collectively referred to as components.

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