In electronics

Electronics

Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...

, a flip-flop or latch is a circuit

Electronic circuit

An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow...

 that has two stable states and can be used to store state information. The circuit can be made to change state by signals applied to one or more control inputs and will have one or two outputs. It is the basic storage element in sequential logic

Sequential logic

In digital circuit theory, sequential logic is a type of logic circuit whose output depends not only on the present input but also on the history of the input. This is in contrast to combinational logic, whose output is a function of, and only of, the present input...

. Flip-flops and latches are a fundamental building block of digital electronics systems used in computers, communications, and many other types of systems.

Flip-flops and latches are used as data storage elements.