ECE 311/L
Chapter 3
Engr. AEstella
Bipolar Junction Transistor
A small and lightweight three-terminal solid-state device
that amplifies signal with no heater requirement or heater
loss, less power absorption, that doesn’t require warm-up
period and operates at lower voltages.
The term bipolar reflects the fact that holes and electrons
participate in the injection process into the oppositely
polarized material.
Construction
npn transistor
The emitter layer is heavily doped, the base lightly doped,
and the collector only lightly doped.
The common ratio of the total width to that of the center
layer is 150:1 and the doping of the outer layers to that of
the sandwiched layer is 10:1 or less. (Doping: increases the
number of free electrons)
pnp transistor
Operation
The basic operation of the two types of transistor is exactly
the same provided the roles of electron and hole are
interchanged.
One p-n junction of a transistor is reverse biased, while the
other is forward biased. This allows the flow of majority
carriers through the forward bias junction and minority
carriers on the other side.
A large number of majority carriers will diffuse across the
forward-biased p-n junction into the n-type material. Will
these contribute directly to the base current or pass directly
into the p-type material. Since the sandwiched n-type
material is very thin and has a low conductivity, a very small
number of these carriers will take this path of high
resistance to the base terminal. The magnitude of the base
current is typically on the order of microamperes as
compared to milliamperes for the emitter and collector
currents. The larger number of these majority carriers will
diffuse across the reverse-biased junction into the p-type
material connected to the collector terminal. The reason for
the relative ease with which the majority carriers can cross
the reverse-biased junction is easily understood if we
consider that for the reverse-biased diode the injected
majority carriers will appear as minority carriers
in the n-type material. In other words, there has been an
injection of minority carriers into the n-type base region
material.
Therefore we can say that,
Since there has been an injection of minority carriers,
collector current however is
Once a transistor is in the “on” state, the base-to-emitter Saturation Region
In saturation region there is an exponential increase in
collector current as the voltage VCB increases toward 0 V.
voltage is
Operating Emitter-Base Collector-Base
COMMON BASE CONFIGURATION Region Junction Junction
Active Forward Reverse
Cut-off Reverse Reverse
Saturation Forward Forward

Operating Output Common

Region Application
Active IC = IE Linear Amplifier
Cut-off IC = 0A Switch
Saturation IC = max
The base is usually the terminal closest to, or at, ground
potential. ALPHA (α)
The relationship between collector and emitter current is
BJT OPERATION REGIONS thru the majority carriers and is described by

The practical levels of alpha are typically from 0.99 to

0.9908.
While the output collector is composed of both majority
and minority carriers, then,

Alpha is also called common-base, short-circuit,

amplification factor.

VOLTAGE AMPLIFICATION FACTOR

Active Region
The active region is the region normally employed for linear
(undistorted) amplifiers.
As the emitter current increases above zero, the collector
current increases to a magnitude essentially equal to that of
the emitter current as determined by the basic transistor-
current relations. The basic amplifying action was produced by transferring a
current I from a low to a high-resistance circuit.

Cut-off Region
The cutoff region is defined as that region where the
collector current is 0 A.
Typical factors of voltage amplification range from 50 to 300
while current amplification (IC/IE) is always less than 1.
COMMON-EMITTER CONFIGURATION
Active Region
The active region for the common-emitter configuration is
that portion of the upper-right quadrant that has the
greatest linearity, that is, that region in which the curves for
IB are nearly straight and equally spaced.
Notice that the magnitude of IB is in microamperes,
compared to milliamperes of IC. The collector-to-emitter
voltage will influence the magnitude of the collector
current.
Cut-off Region
Cut-off region is defined by zero base current which is

The emitter is common or reference to both the input and

output terminals (in this case common to both the base and Cutoff will exist for switching purposes when IB = 0A or IC
collector terminals). Two sets of characteristics are again ICEO for silicon transistors only. For germanium transistors,
necessary to describe fully the behavior of the common- however, cutoff for switching purposes will be defined as
emitter configuration: one for the input or base-emitter those conditions that exist when IC=ICBO.
circuit and one for the output or collector-emitter circuit.
NOTE! Operating Base-Emitter Collector-Emitter
Even though input is through base, current configuration Region Junction Junction
still follows Active Forward Reverse
Cut-off Reverse Reverse
Saturation Forward Forward

BETA (β)

The level typically ranges from about 50 to over 400.

The formal name for βac is common-emitter, forward-
current, amplification factor.
A relationship can be developed between α and β that is,

and with that,

COMMON COLLECTOR CONFIGURATION

The common-collector configuration is used primarily for

impedance-matching purposes since it has a high input
impedance and low output impedance, opposite to that of
the common-base and common-emitter configurations.

BJT POWER DISSIPATION

Common-emitter

Common-base

SUMMARY

CONFIGURATION INPUT OUTPUT COMMON

APPLICATION
Common-Base Emitter Collector Voltage
Amplifier
Common-Emitter Base Collector Current
Amplifier
Common- Base Emitter Impedance
Collector Matching