Thermal runaway

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Diagram of thermal runaway.

Thermal runaway refers to a situation where an increase in temperature changes the conditions
in a way that causes a further increase in temperature, often leading to a destructive result. It is a
kind of uncontrolled positive feedback.

Bipolar junction transistors (BJTs)[edit]

Leakage current increases significantly in bipolar transistors (especially germanium-based
bipolar transistors) as they increase in temperature. Depending on the design of the circuit, this
increase in leakage current can increase the current flowing through a transistor and thus
the power dissipation, causing a further increase in collector-to-emitter leakage current. This is
frequently seen in a pushpull stage of a class AB amplifier. If the pull-up and pull-down
transistors are biased to have minimal crossover distortion atroom temperature, and the biasing
is not temperature-compensated, then as the temperature rises both transistors will be
increasingly biased on, causing current and power to further increase, and eventually destroying
one or both devices.
One rule of thumb to avoid thermal runaway is to keep the operating point of a BJT so that Vce
1/2Vcc
Another practice is to mount a thermal feedback sensing transistor or other device on the heat
sink, to control the crossover bias voltage. As the output transistors heat up, so does the thermal
feedback transistor. This in turn causes the thermal feedback transistor to turn on at a slightly
lower voltage, reducing the crossover bias voltage, and so reducing the heat dissipated by the
output transistors.
If multiple BJT transistors are connected in parallel (which is typical in high current applications),
a current hogging problem can occur. Special measures must be taken to control this
characteristic vulnerability of BJTs.

In power transistors (which effectively consist of many small transistors in parallel), current
hogging can occur between different parts of the transistor itself, with one part of the transistor
becoming more hot than the others. This is called second breakdown, and can result in
destruction of the transistor even when the average junction temperature seems to be at a safe
level.