Integrated injection logic

Integrated injection logic (IIL, IL, or I2L) is a class of digital circuits built with multiple collector bipolar junction transistors (BJT). When introduced it had speed comparable to TTL yet was almost as low power as CMOS, making it ideal for use in VLSI (and larger) integrated circuits. The gates can be made smaller with this logic family than with CMOS because complementary transistors are not needed. Although the logic voltage levels are very close (High: 0.7V, Low: 0.2V), I2L has high noise immunity because it operates by current instead of voltage. I2L was developed in 1971 by Siegfried K. Wiedmann and Horst H. Berger who originally called it merged-transistor logic (MTL). A disadvantage of this logic family is that the gates draw power when not switching unlike with CMOS. The I2L inverter gate is constructed with a PNP common base current source transistor and an NPN common emitter open collector inverter transistor (i.e. they are connected to the GND). On a wafer, these two transistors are merged. A small voltage (around 1 volts) is supplied to the emitter of the current source transistor to control the current supplied to the inverter transistor. Transistors are used for current sources on integrated circuits because they are much smaller than resistors.