The wire or conductor which constitutes the coil is called the winding.8 The hole in the center of the coil is called the core area or magnetic axis.9 Each loop of wire is called a turn.10 In windings in which the turns touch, the wire must be insulated with a coating of nonconductive insulation such as plastic or enamel to prevent the current from passing between the wire turns. The winding is often wrapped around a coil form made of plastic or other material to hold it in place.11 The ends of the wire are brought out and attached to an external circuit. Windings may have additional electrical connections along their length; these are called taps.12 A winding that has a single tap in the center of its length is called center-tapped.13
Coils can have more than one winding, insulated electrically from each other. When there are two or more windings around a common magnetic axis, the windings are said to be inductively coupled or magnetically coupled.14 A time-varying current through one winding will create a time-varying magnetic field that passes through the other winding, which will induce a time-varying voltage in the other windings. This is called a transformer.15 The winding to which current is applied, which creates the magnetic field, is called the primary winding. The other windings are called secondary windings.
Many electromagnetic coils have a magnetic core, a piece of ferromagnetic material like iron in the center to increase the magnetic field.16 The current through the coil magnetizes the iron, and the field of the magnetized material adds to the field produced by the wire. This is called a ferromagnetic-core or iron-core coil.17 A ferromagnetic core can increase the magnetic field and inductance of a coil by hundreds or thousands of times over what it would be without the core. A ferrite core coil is a variety of coil with a core made of ferrite, a ferrimagnetic ceramic compound.18 Ferrite coils have lower core losses at high frequencies.
A coil without a ferromagnetic core is called an air-core coil.19 This includes coils wound on plastic or other nonmagnetic forms, as well as coils which actually have empty air space inside their windings.
Coils can be classified by the frequency of the current they are designed to operate with:
Coils can be classified by their function:
Main article: Electromagnet
Electromagnets are coils that generate a magnetic field for some external use, often to exert a mechanical force on something.20 or remove existing background fields.21 A few specific types:
Main article: Inductor
Inductors or reactors are coils which generate a magnetic field which interacts with the coil itself, to induce a back EMF which opposes changes in current through the coil. Inductors are used as circuit elements in electrical circuits, to temporarily store energy or resist changes in current. A few types:
Main article: Transformer
A transformer is a device with two or more magnetically coupled windings (or sections of a single winding). A time varying current in one coil (called the primary winding) generates a magnetic field which induces a voltage in the other coil (called the secondary winding). A few types:
Electric machines such as motors and generators have one or more windings which interact with moving magnetic fields to convert electrical energy to mechanical energy. Often a machine will have one winding through which passes most of the power of the machine (the "armature"), and a second winding which provides the magnetic field of the rotating element ( the "field winding") which may be connected by brushes or slip rings to an external source of electric current. In an induction motor, the "field" winding of the rotor is energized by the slow relative motion between the rotating winding and the rotating magnetic field produced by the stator winding, which induces the necessary exciting current in the rotor.
These are coils used to translate time-varying magnetic fields to electric signals, and vice versa. A few types:
There are also types of coil which don't fit into these categories.
Main article: Coil winding technology
Stauffer, H. Brooke (2002). NFPA's Pocket Dictionary of Electrical Terms. Jones and Hymel Tucker. p. 36. ISBN 978-0877655992. 978-0877655992 ↩
Laplante, Phillip A. (1999). Comprehensive Dictionary of Electrical Engineering. Springer. pp. 114–115. ISBN 978-3540648352. 978-3540648352 ↩
Arun, P. (2006). Electronics. Alpha Sciences International Ltd. pp. 73–77. ISBN 978-1842652176. 978-1842652176 ↩
Amos, S. W.; Amos, Roger (4 March 2002). Newnes 2002, p. 129. Elsevier. ISBN 9780080524054. 9780080524054 ↩
Stauffer, H.B. (2005). NFPA's Pocket Dictionary of Electrical Terms. Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. p. 273. ISBN 9780877655992. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9780877655992 ↩
Amos, S W; Roger Amos (2002). Newnes Dictionary of Electronics. Newnes. p. 191. ISBN 978-0080524054. 978-0080524054 ↩
Laplante, P.A. (1999). Comprehensive Dictionary of Electrical Engineering. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 633. ISBN 9783540648352. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9783540648352 ↩
Stauffer, H.B. (2005). NFPA's Pocket Dictionary of Electrical Terms. Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. p. 29. ISBN 9780877655992. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9780877655992 ↩
Amos, S.W.; Amos, R. (2002). Newnes Dictionary of Electronics. Elsevier Science. p. 167. ISBN 9780080524054. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9780080524054 ↩
Amos, S.W.; Amos, R. (2002). Newnes Dictionary of Electronics. Elsevier Science. p. 326. ISBN 9780080524054. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9780080524054 ↩
Laplante, Phillip A. (1998). Comprehensive Dictionary of Electrical Engineering. Springer. p. 143. ISBN 978-3540648352. 978-3540648352 ↩
Laplante, P.A. (1999). Comprehensive Dictionary of Electrical Engineering. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 346. ISBN 9783540648352. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9783540648352 ↩
Laplante, P.A. (1999). Comprehensive Dictionary of Electrical Engineering. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 243. ISBN 9783540648352. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9783540648352 ↩
Laplante, P.A. (1999). Comprehensive Dictionary of Electrical Engineering. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 19. ISBN 9783540648352. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9783540648352 ↩
Amos, S.W.; Amos, R. (2002). Newnes Dictionary of Electronics. Elsevier Science. p. 113. ISBN 9780080524054. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 9780080524054 ↩
Hobson, P. J.; et al. (2022). "Bespoke magnetic field design for a magnetically shielded cold atom interferometer". Sci. Rep. 12 (1): 10520. arXiv:2110.04498. Bibcode:2022NatSR..1210520H. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-13979-4. PMC 9217970. PMID 35732872. S2CID 238583775. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9217970 ↩