Transistor Quirks

Lesser-Known Characteristics of BJTs

by Dennis L Feucht

Electronics engineering courses in universities teach semiconductor electronics, though it is usually only in
graduate school that transistor courses cover the finer details of bipolar junction transistors (BJTs). Many
engineers do not take the graduate solid-state course yet go on to design BJT circuits. This TechNote briefly
surveys some of the lesser-known characteristics of BJTs for the purpose of raising your awareness of them
if they are new to you.

Early Effect

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This effect is generally revealed in undergrad engineering as base-width modulation. As the collector-base
reverse voltage increases, the c-b junction widens as carriers are reduced in the space-charge layer. The
widening occurs in both the collector and base regions. The base narrows and this increases the field
gradient across the base. What results is an increase of collector current with an increase in VCE, and this
corresponds effectively to a resistance, ro. This parameter is found in the Ebers-Moll 3 and Gummel-Poon
BJT models. It is an important parameter beyond quasistatic emitter resistance, re, and base-collector current
gain, . (See Designing Amplifier Circuits, by D Feucht, at http://www.scitechpubs.com for circuit analysis
that includes ro.) Base-width modulation is known as the Early Effect, not for any temporal reason but for
the family name of the credited discoverer of it.

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Late Effect

Crowding

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BJTs are not symmetrical in that the minority-carrier doping of emitter and collector are much different.
However, collector and emitter can be swapped, causing a much-reduced . Operation in this inverted mode
also has an Early Effect associated with it, though its importance is not often manifested in circuit design.
Ian Getreu, former Tektronix BJT modeler par excellence (and author of a good book on BJT modeling; see
our book reviews) light-heartedly called it the Late effect, though the less jocular expression might be the
inverted Early Effect.

The base-emitter junction voltage, VBE is not constant across the base because the metal contacts to the base
are near the outer edge of a round transistor. Voltage dropped across ohmic base resistance, rb, reduces VBE
with distance across the junction toward the center of the transistor. The result is that most of the emitter
current flows near the periphery and less in the center. Dynamically, it takes time for the distributed base C

to charge through rb and bring up vBE at the center, causing early transient current to flow at the periphery.
The center part of the transistor lags the periphery in behavior. This effect is known as current crowding.
The effect of crowding on BJT design has been to eliminate the region where the emitter current is
negligible, resulting in hollow-emitter BJTs. The BJT thus assumes the shape of a ring rather than a circle.
This also has the effect of increasing BJT speed because carriers away from the center are closer to the base
contact and do not have to be removed from the base through a time constant associated with rb when there
is no longer any center from which to be removed.

High-Level Injection
A log-log plot of IC versus VBE is linear with a 1/slope of about 60 mV/decade in the normal region of
collector current at room temperature. As current increases, minority carrier concentrations at the edges of
the junctions approach that of the majority carriers. The effect on both diffusion of base minority carriers
and drift in the field gradient of the base causes the slope of IC(VBE) to decrease to half that of the mid-level
injection region.

The Kirk Effect

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Under very high-level injection, the minority carrier concentrations of the collector-base junction exceed
that of the majority carriers, causing the voltage polarity of the junction to actually reverse and become
slightly forward-biased. This is known as the Kirk Effect. This effect, like the Early Effect, is also named
after the discoverer, not James T Kirk of Star Trek but C T Kirk. (This effect has disappointingly not been
found to enhance the performance of dilithium crystals in warp drives, and occurs only under very highlevel injection, causing the chief engineer to frequently utter, Im givin er all shes got!) The Kirk Effect
is accompanied by space-charge-limited current flow and effective base widening, as the effective edge of
the collector junction retreats because of carrier polarity reversal. Besides  reduction, this has the
additional consequence of causing fT to be reduced, as reported in landmark papers by van der Ziel and
Agourdis in 1966 and more comprehensively by Whittier and Tremere in the IEEE Transactions on
Electron Devices, Vol ED-16, pp 455 - 457, May 1969. In short, high-level injection not only causes a
decrease in , it also causes transistor speed to decrease.

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Negative Collector Current at Low VCE

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In deep saturation, with the collector-base junction strongly forward-biased, it is possible for the collector
current to actually reverse direction at low VBE. At first this might suggest a negative resistance is involved,
but it is instead an abundance of base current flowing out of (for npn) or into (for pnp) the collector. The
voltage at which the collector current is zero is:
VCE ( I C = 0 A) = VT  ln(1 /
R )
where,
R is the BJT
in inverted mode.

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Of course, IC is also zero at the origin, where VCE = 0 V.

In saturation, the c-b junction is forward-biased by definition, and sat is the forced  = IC /IB. Then for the
normal mode of BJT operation (with forward currents),  = F, and the collector resistance is:
VT
k T
, VT = B
rCE 
qe
  
I C  1
sat

F 

As sat increases, the transistor comes out of saturation when increasing sat = F and the collector again
functions as a current source.

Low-Level Injection

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At the other end of useful transistor IC range,
again decreases and the region of low-level injection is
entered. In this region, parasitic currents such as surface recombination effects add to base current and cause
the log-log plot to again deviate from a straight line. Between low-level and high-level injection regions, the
midrange operation of the BJT extends over nine decades of accurate logarithmic relationship between IC
and VBE making this a rather marvelous device. Finding its departures from the ideal its quirks often
requires pushing the limits of its operation. No wonder it is so easy to design BJT circuits, right?