UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION, WINNEBA

DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS EDUCATION

ELECTRONICS 1

LECTURE NOTE 4

ISAAC KWESI ACQUAH

Electronics 1

Transistors
INTRODUCTION
The bipolar junction transistor, or BJT, is a foundational electronic component. It serves as the
basis for a variety of applications ranging from simple amplifiers to device control to complex
digital computing circuitry. Variations exist for applications spanning very low to very high
frequency work; low, medium and high power; inexpensive general purpose No matter what a
BJT has been optimized for, all BJTs can be considered to be current boosting devices. Of
course, if you can boost current, then you can also boost voltage and power, depending on the
associated impedances. Further, all BJTs share the same basic structure: three alternating layers
of N-type and P-type material with one external lead attached to each layer. through highly
specialized niche items; and so forth.
In this manner, the BJT can be thought of as an extension of the basic diode: just add another
segment of oppositely doped material to one end of the diode creating a second PN junction.
The configuration could be either PNP or NPN. There are uses for both types and circuits often
work best when the two types are used together.
THE BIPOLAR JUNCTION TRANSISTOR
In prior work we discovered that the PN junction is the foundation of the basic diode. Under
normal operating conditions the interface between the N-type and P-type materials is devoid
of free charges and is referred to as a depletion region. The dissimilar Fermi levels of N-type
and P-type materials lead to an “energy hill” between them, and without an external potential
of the proper polarity, the junction will not allow current to flow. The required magnitude is a
function of the material used but it is always the case that the P material (anode) must be
positive with respect to the N material (anode).
We extend this idea by adding a second portion of N material to the other side of the P
material, creating an N-P-N “sandwich” of sorts. This is shown in Figure 1

Figure 1
This diagram is drawn to ease the understanding of the operation of the device, extending our
earlier diode work. In contrast, real BJTs are built in more of a “layer cake” fashion, N-P-N
bottom to top16. Of course, the spatial orientation of the device has no bearing on its operation
so this is not a major issue for our purposes. The three terminals are named the emitter, base
and collector. The collector is the largest of the three regions while the base is relatively thin
and lightly doped.

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Above absolute zero there will be recombination and two depletion regions will form as shown
in Figure 2

Figure 2
BIASING THE BJT
Now let's consider adding external sources to bias the transistor. We begin by adding two DC
sources with associated current limiting resistors as shown in Figure 3

This circuit is comprised of two loops, one between the base-emitter and the second between
the base-collector. In the B-E loop, the emitter supply VEE reverse-biases the base-emitter
diode. A similar situation occurs in B-C loop where the collector supply reverse-biases the
base-collector diode. The result is that virtually no current flows anywhere in the circuit.
If the two supplies are reversed in polarity then both diodes become forward-biased and we see
currents flowing in both loops dependent on the precise values of the supplies and associated
resistors

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Figure 3
No surprises so far. Now consider if we forward-bias the base-emitter diode while
simultaneously reverse biasing the base-collector diode, as shown in Figure 3.
With a simple pair of diodes we'd expect the B-E loop to show a high current and the B-C loop
show negligible current. With a BJT, this is not what happens. Instead, what we see is a high
current in both loops, and those currents are very nearly equal in magnitude. How does this
come about?
The key to understanding this situation is that the base of the BJT is thin and lightly doped. In
contrast, the dual diode model splits the base into two separate pieces of material and that
makes all the difference.

Figure 4
Electron flow will facilitate this explanation so we'll draw the current directions using dashed
lines. From the left side of the diagram, electrons exit the emitter supply and enter the N emitter.
Here they are the majority carrier. The base-emitter depletion creates an energy hill just as it
did with a single PN junction. As long as there is sufficient potential from the emitter supply,
the electrons will be pushed into the base.
These electrons will attempt to recombine with the majority base holes, however, because the
base is physically thin and lightly doped, only a small percentage of the injected electrons will
recombine with base holes and exit the base terminal back to ground. This current is called the
base current or the recombination current. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the remaining
electrons (95% to over 99%) will find their way to the base-collector depletion region and then
to the collector.

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Once in the collector, the electrons are again the majority carrier and flow back to the positive
terminal of the collector power supply. The energy diagram of the transistor is depicted in
Figure 5.

Figure 5
At first glance, it might appear as though the emitter and collector leads can be swapped with
no change in operation. With real-world devices this is not possible generally because the
emitter and collector regions are optimized and not physically identical. Thus, placing
transistors into a circuit backwards, with emitter and collector leads swapped, will usually
result in unpredictable behaviour.
Based on the foregoing discussion and what we already know about PN junctions, we can
summarize transistor performance as follows:
From KCL,
𝐼𝐸 = 𝐼𝐶 + 𝐼𝐸 .
𝐼𝐶 >> 𝐼𝐵 , therefore 𝐼𝐸 ≈ 𝐼𝐶 .
The base-emitter junction is forward-biased, therefore
𝑉𝐵𝐸 ≈ 0.7 V (silicon).
The base-collector junction is reverse-biased, therefore 𝑉𝐶𝐵 is large. Conventional current
flows into the collector and base, and out of the emitter.
We can also define a couple of transistor performance parameters.
The ratio of collector current to emitter current is called α (alpha). α typically is greater than
0.95. A somewhat more useful parameter is the ratio of collector current to base current.

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This is called β (beta) and can also be found on transistor spec sheets as 𝐻𝐹𝐸 (𝐻𝐹𝐸 is one of
four hybrid parameters).
It is also referred to generically as current gain (if 𝐼𝐵 is in the input signal and 𝐼𝐶 is the output
signal then β represents the amount of signal boost or gain).
For small signal transistors β typically is in the range of 100 to 200, although it can be larger.
For power transistors, β tends to be smaller, more like 25 to 50.
Presented as formulas we have:
α =𝐼𝐶 /𝐼𝐸 … … … … … … (1)
β = 𝐼𝐶 /𝐼𝐵 … … … … … … (2)
And with a little math,
α = β / (β+1)
β = α / (1-α )
𝐼𝐶 = β𝐼𝐵

THE PNP BIPOLAR JUNCTION TRANSISTOR

The PNP version of the BJT is created by swapping the material for each layer. The outcome
is the logical inverse of the NPN regarding current directions and voltage polarities.
That is, conventional current flows into the emitter, and out of the collector and base (echoing
the electron flow of the NPN).
Further, voltages across the device have reversed polarity, for example, 𝑉𝐵𝐸 ≈ −0.7 V.
All of the other characteristics remain unchanged so equations such 1 and 2 are still applicable.
Just about any NPN-based circuit has its PNP counterpart.

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