AUGUST 1, 2014

The Bipolar Junction Transistor or BJT was invented in 1948 at Bell

Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, USA. It was the first mass produced
transistor, ahead of the MOS field-effect transistor (MOSFET) by a decade.
The term bipolar refers to the fact that both electrons and holes are
involved in the operation of a BJT. The minority carrier diffusion plays the
leading role just as in the PN junction diode. The word junction refers to
the fact that PN junctions are critical to the operation of the BJT. BJTs are
also simply known as bipolar transistors. A BJT is made of a heavily N-type
doped emitter, a P-type base, and an N-type collector. This device is an
NPN BJT. (A PNP BJT would have a P-emitter, N-type base, and P-type
collector.) NPN transistors exhibit higher trans conductance and speed than
PNP transistors because the electron mobility is larger than the hole
mobility. BJTs are almost exclusively of the NPN type since high
performance is BJTs competitive edge over MOSFETs.
A bipolar junction transistor is formed by joining three sections of
semiconductors with alternatively different doping.
Physical structure of BJT:
Both electrons and holes participate in the conduction process for
bipolar devices.
It consists of two PN junctions constructed in a special way and
connected in series, back to back.
The transistors have 3-terminal devices with emitter, base and
collector terminals.
BJTs divided into two groups: NPN and PNP transistors.

Modes of operation:

Two junctions of BJT can be either forward or reversed-biased.

It can operate in different modes depending on the junction bias.
It can operate in active mode for amplifier circuits.
Switching applications utilize both the cutoff and saturation modes.

Operation of the NPN transistor in the active mode, as emitter is heavily

doped, a large number of electrons diffuse into the base (only small fraction
combine with holes).

If the base is thin these electrons get near the

depletion region of BC junction and are swept into collector if V CB 0.

Operation of the NPN transistor in the saturation mode, both EBJ and CBJ
are forward biased, the carrier injection from both emitter and collector into
base. Base minority carrier concentration change accordingly to leading of
reduced slope as VBC increases. Saturation mode divides into 3 groups:
Soft Saturation - diffusion current is small and I very close to its
active-mode level
Deep Saturation Region - it is smaller than its active-mode level
Near cut-off - close to zero
The PNP transistor is the analog to NPN BJT. Compare to a NPN, PNP
current directions are reverse and the voltage subscripts switched. Like the
cut-off, EB is a reversed biased. The active, EB id a forward biased and
CB is a reversed biased. And the deep saturation, EB is forward while CB
is reversed biased.

http://aries.ucsd.edu/NAJMABADI/CLASS/ECE65/06-W/NOTES/BJT1.pdf
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~hu/Chenming-Hu_ch8.pdf
http://cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw/~lhlu/eecourses/Electronics1/Electronics_Ch4.pdf