Robots requiring gold to make all transistors and leads (8)
I believe the answer is:
automata
'robots' is the definition.
('automaton' can be a synonym of 'robot')
'gold to make all transistors and leads' is the wordplay.
'gold' becomes 'Au' (Au is the chemical symbol for gold).
'leads' says to take the initial letters.
The first letters of 'make all transistors and' is 'mata'.
'au'+'to'+'mata'='AUTOMATA'
'requiring' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for automata that I've seen before include "Mechanical humans" , "group of robots?" , "Mechanical figures" , "They don't think" , "set of robots" .)