P RACTICE 2

Bipolar junction transistor

In this second practice we will be using the BJT as an example of the union of two semiconductor materials

28/02/13

28-2-2013

Practice 2
BIPOLAR JUNCTION TRANSISTOR
A bipolar junction transistor (BJT or bipolar transistor) is a type of transistor that relies on the contact of two types of semiconductor for its operation. BJTs can be used as amplifiers, switches, or in oscillators. BJTs can be found either as individual discrete components, or in large numbers as parts of integrated circuits.

Bipolar transistors are so named because their operation involves

both electrons and holes. These two kinds of charge carriers are characteristic of the two kinds of doped semiconductor material. In contrast, unipolar transistors such as the field-effect transistors have only one kind of charge carrier. Charge flow in a BJT is due to bidirectional diffusion of charge carriers across a junction between two regions of different charge concentrations. The regions of a BJT are called emitter, collector, and base. A discrete transistor has three leads for connection to these regions. By design, most of the BJT collector current is due to the flow of charges injected from a high-concentration emitter into the base where there are minority carriers that diffuse toward the collector, and so BJTs are classified as minority-carrier devices.

28-2-2013

BJTs come in two types, or polarities, known as PNP and NPN based on the doping types of the three main terminal regions. An NPN transistor comprises two semiconductor junctions that share a thin pdoped anode region, and a PNP transistor comprises two semiconductor junctions that share a thin n-doped cathode region. In typical operation, the baseemitter junction is forward biased, which means that the p-doped side of the junction is at a more positive potential than the n-doped side, and the basecollector junction is reverse biased. In an NPN transistor, when positive bias is applied to the baseemitter junction, the equilibrium is disturbed between the thermally generated carriers and the repelling electric field of the n-doped emitter depletion region. This allows thermally excited electrons to inject from the emitter into the base region. These electrons diffuse through the base from the region of high concentration near the emitter towards the region of low concentration near the collector. The electrons in the base are called minority carriers because the base is doped p-type, which makes holes the majority carrier in the base. To minimize the percentage of carriers that recombine before reaching the collectorbase junction, the transistor's base region must be thin enough that carriers can diffuse across it in much less time than the semiconductor's minority carrier lifetime. In particular, the thickness of the base must be much less than the diffusion length

28-2-2013

of the electrons. The collectorbase junction is reverse-biased, and so little electron injection occurs from the collector to the base, but electrons that diffuse through the base towards the collector are swept into the collector by the electric field in the depletion region of the collectorbase junction. The thin shared base and asymmetric collectoremitter doping is what differentiates a bipolar transistor from two separate and oppositely biased diodes connected in series.

WHAT DO WE NEED?
For this recipe we will use 1 Proto Board 4 2N2222 Transistor 1 Multimeter Voltage Source 2 10 K Resistors

28-2-2013

EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT

1.- Measure the from your BJTs and classiffy them

267 320 250 330

2.- Assemble the circuit below

28-2-2013

And take a measure for the voltage on both resistors

Resistor VR1 10 K VR2 10 K

Voltage 11.46 V 11.36 V

Collector Emisor Voltage BJT 250 BJT 275

Voltage .620 V .822 V

3.- Replace one resistor of 100K for one of 1 k

Resistor VR1 10 K VR2 1 K Voltage 11.46 2.3 Voltage .623 V 9.73 V

Collector Emisor Voltage BJT 250 BJT 275

28-2-2013

4.- CALCULATE IC1 AND IC2 IN BOTH CASES

First Case

Second case

FINAL THOUGHS Hector We learnt about the distribution of voltage generated by an array of BJTs. I investigated that he BJT remains a device that excels in some applications, such as discrete circuit design, due to the very wide selection of BJT types available, and because of its high transconductance and output resistance compared to MOSFETs.

Fernando One of the uses of this type of arrays is Because of the known temperature and current dependence of the forward-biased base emitter junction voltage, the BJT can be used to measure temperature by subtracting two voltages at two different bias currents in a known ratio.

28-2-2013