SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

MATERIAL SCIENCE
AND
ELECTRONICS COMPONENT
FREQUENCY RESPONSE AND SWITCHING OF BIPOLAR TRANSISTORS
GROUP ASSIGNMENT




Name Matrix. No
Celson Leesoon BK12110042
Francis Felix BK12160450
George Jantan Anak Setin BK12110093
Heo Kuan Shun BK12110106
Jeseka Manahan BK12110122
Khairil M. Nizwan BK12110132
Nurul Anis Ahmad BK12110284
Chen Zhu Shin BK12110045

Introduction
The possible modes of operation are depend on the biasing conditions of the emitter-base
and collector-base junctions. Generally, in analog or linear circuits the transistors are
operated in the active mode only. However, in digital circuits all four modes of operation
may be involved. In this section we consider the frequency response and switching
characteristics of bipolar transistors.

Figure 1.0 : Schematic diagram of (a) the Early effect and (b) Early voltage V
A
. The collector
currents for different base currents meet at V
A
.


Objective
1. To discuss the frequency response of the transistor at high-frequency equivalent circuit
and identified its cut-off frequency.
2. To analyse the behavior of the transistor as a switch and how the behavior of carrier
during the switching process

Frequency Response

Figure 1 (a) Bipolar transistor connected in the common-emitter configuration.
(b) Small-signal operation of the transistor circuit.
High-Frequency Equivalent Circuit
From figure 1(a), where the transistor is connected in a common-emitter configuration. For
a given dc input voltage V
EB
, a dc base current I
B
and dc collector current I
C
flow in the
transistor. These currents correspond to the operating point shown in figure1 (b). The load
line, determined by the applied voltage V
CC
and the load resistance R
L
, intercepts the V
EC

axis at V
CC
and has a slope of ( 1/R
L
). When a small ac signal is superimposed on the input
voltage, the base current I
B
will vary as a function of time, as illustrated in figure1(b). This
variation, in turn, brings about a corresponding variation in the output current i
C
, which is
0

times larger than the input current variation. As a result, the transistor amplifies the input
signal.
From figure 2(a), the equivalent circuit for this low-frequency amplifier is shown. At higher
frequencies, we extend the equivalent circuit by adding the appropriate capacitances. Since
the emitter-base junction is forward biased, we expect to have a depletion capacitance C
EB

and a diffusion capacitance C
d
similar to that of a forward-biased pn junction. For the
reverse-biased collector-base junction, we expect to have only a depletion capacitance C
CB
.
From figure 2(b), the high-frequency equivalent circuit with the three added capacitances is
shown. Note that,

is called the transconductance.


is called the input conductance.

To take into account the base width modulation effect, there is a finite output conductance,

In addition, we have a base resistance r
B
and a collector resistance r
C
. Figure 2(c) represents
the high-frequency equivalent circuit incorporating all of the elements.

Cutoff Frequency
From figure 2(c), the transconductance g
m
and the input conductance g
EB
are dependent on
the common-base current gain. At low frequencies, the current gain is a constant,
independent of the operating frequency. However, the current gain will decrease after a
critical frequency is reached. A typical plot of the current gain versus operating frequency is
shown in figure 3. The common-base current gain can be described as

Where
0
is the low-frequency (or dc) common-base current gain and

is the common-
base cutoff frequency. At =

the magnitude of is 0.707

0
(3 dB down).





Figure 2 (a) Basic transistor equivalent circuit. (b) Basic circuit with the addition
of depletion and diffusion capacitances. (c) Basic circuit with the addition of
resistance and conductance.


Figure 3: Current gain as a function of operating frequency.

Figure 3 shows the common-emitter current gain . We have,

where the

is the common-emitter cut off frequency and is given by

Since
0
1,

is much smaller than

. Another cutoff frequency is

T
when || becomes
unity. We obtain

Therefore, f
T
is very close to but smaller than

.
The cutoff frequency
T
can also be expressed as (2T)1 , where
T
is the total time of the
carrier transit from
the emitter to the collector.
T
includes the emitter delay time
E
, the base transit time
B
,
and the collector transit time
C
. The most important delay time is
B
. The distance traveled
by the minority carriers in the base in a time interval dt is dx = v(x)dt, where v(x) is the
effective minority-carrier velocity in the base. This velocity is related to the current as


where A is the device area and p(x) is the distribution of the minority carriers. The transit
time
B
required for a hole to traverse the base is given by

For a straight-line hole distribution, for I
p
leads to




To improve the frequency response, the transit time of minority carriers across the base
must be short. Therefore, high-frequency transistors are designed with a narrow base width.
Because the electron diffusion constant in silicon is about three times larger than that of
holes, all high-frequency silicon transistors are of the n-p-n type. Another way to reduce the
base transit time is to use a graded base with a built-in field. For a large doping variation
(i.e., high base doping near the emitter and low base doping near the collector), the built-in
field in the base helps move carriers toward the collector and reduces the base transit time.

Switching Transients

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and
electrical power in digital applications. In these applications, we use a small base current to
change the collector current from an off condition to an on condition (or vice versa) in a
very short time. The off condition corresponds to a high-voltage and low-current state, and
the on condition corresponds to a low-voltage and high-current state. A basic setup of a
switching circuit is shown in Figure 5a, where the emitter-base voltage V
EB
is suddenly
changed from a negative value to a positive value. The output current of the transistor is
shown in Figure 5b.


Figure 5: (a) Schematic of a transistor switching circuit. (b) Switching operation
from cutoff to saturation.


From the figure 5,the collector current is initially very low because both the emitter-base
junction and the collector-base junction are reverse biased. The current will follow the load
line through the active region and will finally reach a high current level, where both
junctions become forward biased. Thus, the transistor is virtually open-circuited between the
emitter and collector terminals in the off condition, which corresponds to the cutoff mode,
and short-circuited in the on condition, which corresponds to the saturation mode. Therefore,
a transistor operated in this mode can nearly duplicate the function of an ideal switch.The
switching time is the time required for a transistor to switch from the off condition to the on
condition, or vice versa. The transistor switching characteristics is shown in Figure 6.



Figure 6: Transistor switching characteristics. (a) Input base current pulse. (b)
Variation of the base-stored charge with time. (c) Variation of the collector
current with time. (d) Minority-carrier distributions in the base at different times.
Figure 6a shows that when a positive input current pulse is applied to the emitter-base
terminal at time t = 0, the transistor starts to turn on. At t = t
2
, the base current is suddenly
switched to zero and the transistor starts to turn off. The transient behavior of the collector
current I
C
can be determined by the variation of the total excess minority carrier charge
stored in the base, Q
B
(t). A plot of Q
B
(t) as a function of time is shown in Figure 6b. During
the turn-on transient, the base-stored charge will increase from zero to Q
B
(t
2
). During the
turn-off transient, the base-stored charge will decrease from QB(t2) to zero. For Q
B
(t) < Q
S
,
where Q
S
is the base charge when V
CB
= 0 (i.e., at the edge of saturation, as shown in
Figure 6d), the transistor is in the active mode.

The variation of I
C
with time is plotted in Figure 6c. In the turn-on transient, the stored base
charge reaches Q
S
, the charge at the edge of saturation at t = t
1
. For Q
B
> Q
S
the device is
operated in saturation mode, and both the emitter and collector currents remain essentially
constant. Figure 6d shows that for any t > t
1
(say t = t
a
), the hole distribution pn(x) will be
parallel to that for t = t
1
. Therefore, the gradients at x = 0 and x = W, as well as the
currents, remain the same. In the turn-off transient, since the device is initially in the
saturation mode, the collector current remains relatively unchanged until QB is reduced to
Q
S
(Figure 6d). The time from t
2
to t
3
when Q
B
= Q
S
is called the storage time delay t
S
.
When Q
B
= Q
S
, the device enters the active mode at t = t
3
. After that time, the collector
current will decay exponentially toward zero.The turn-on time depends on how fast we can
add holes (minority carriers in the p-n-p transistor) to the base region. The turn-off time
depends on how fast we can remove the holes by recombination. One of the most important
parameters for switching transistors is the minority carrier lifetime
p
. One effective method
to reduce
p
for faster switching is to introduce efficient generation-recombination centers
near the midgap.


Conclusion
The transistor is a multijunction semiconductor device. Generally, the transistor is integrated
with other circuit elements for voltage gain, current gain, or signal-power gain. The bipolar
transistor, also called the bipolar junction transistor (BJT), is one of the most important
semiconductor devices. Frequency response of a bipolar transistor is important in many
electronic systems. Transistors also are commonly used as electronic switches, both for
high-power applications such as switched-mode power supplies and for low-power
applications such as logic gates. Thus, by understanding the behavior the frequency
response and switching behavior of the transistor such as the cut off frequency and the
switching time will help us a lot in develop the electronic devices.