(1) To bond together. See
antifuse.
(2) A protective device that is designed to melt, or blow, when a specified amount of current is passed through it. A fuse-based electric panel in a home or building is a prime example, although most fuses have been replaced with circuit breakers that can be manually restored after being tripped.
PROMs Are Arrays of Fuses
Programmable read-only memory (PROM) chips are created as a series of minuscule fuses that are selectively blown in order to create the binary patterns of machine language and data. See
PROM.