‘The Bipolar Junction Transistor — BJT Prelab P1) Introduction In your previous experiments, you learned about diodes and their applications as switches. As you learned, the diode can be used as a switch, but i’s not easy to have control over when the diode should conduct and when it shouldn't. The on and off switching of the diode is dependent solely on the voltage between its two terminals. ‘A transistor is a device with three terminals and you can think of one of the terminals as a control terminal. Idealy, if a current is present in the control terminal, the device will act as a closed switch between the two other terminals, Conversely, if no current is present in the control terminal, the device will act as an open switch between the other two terminals. “The symbol for a Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) and two of its common packages is shown in figure P1 (2) and (b). The BJTs come in two major types: the PNP and the NPN. ‘A simplified schematic of the internal structure of a BJT transistor is shown in figure PI (). As you can see the BJT is like two diodes which are connected to each other at one end (gare P2) ‘The three terminals of a BJT are called emitter, base and collector as shown in figure Pt ‘The arrowhead on the emitter shows the conventional flow direction. The base of the BJT is the control terminal we talked about before. Although one of the applications of the BJT is as an electronically controlled switch in a circuit, the BJT is mostly used in amplifiers. In order to understand how the BJT can operate as an amplificr, you should first learn about the regions of operation of a BJT and the characteristic curves. © c c ” = 2 ' N P c KD B @ ® © Figure P1 - (s) Two different symbols used for BJT in circuits: ly? NPN transistor, right ~ PNP transistor. (b) Two different packages for discrete low power BJT. (©) A sitmplified view of the internal structure of a BJT: £—NPN, right — PNP “The names of the terminals are abbreviated as: B for base, C for colctor and E for emitter. Zh ”N N B . 2 + N N Figure P2 ‘The BJT can be viewed as two diodes with a common terminal. These diodes ate referred to as collector diode (D) and emitter diode (D,) throughout this experiment. P2) Operation Regions and Characteristic Curves Bach of the collector and emitter diodes can be forward or reverse biased, thus there are four regions of operation for a BJT. Table P1 depicts these regions. The two cases where both De and Dz are forward biased or both reverse biased, work as you may expect. When both diodes are reverse-biased, almost no current passes through any of the terminals of the BJT. When both diodes are forward-biased, a large current exists in each diode “The region of special interest is the active region, where Dy, is forward-biased and Dg is reverse biased. Although you may expect that there should be a large current in emitter and a small current in collector, this is not the case. Instead, the current in collector will be almost equally large as the emitter current. The active region is where the BJT can function as an amplifier. As you can see in figure P1, the two N-type (P-type) regions for NPN (PNP) are not symmetric, ie. the collector is larger than the emitter. As a result, if you change the place of collector and emitter in your circuits the device will not fanction properly. This operating region has just some limited practical use. In order to make sure the BJT is in the desired region of operation and will remain in the region for a known set of input signals, itis necessary to know the concept of characteristic curves of the BJT. In this experiment you will only encounter the curves that are obtained for the common emitter configuration of the BJT. ‘The common emitter configuration is shown in figure 1, As you can see the emitter is common to both voltage sources. ‘This configuration is the most widely uted configuration of the BJT. You will learn about the other configurations in your future courses. If the collector-emitter voltage is kept constant, the curve of base current, I, versus Vp is called the input characteristic of the BJT (figure P3 — left). As expected, this curve is similar to the characteristic curve of a diode. The other set of characteristic curves are the oufput characteristic cueves. These curves are ‘more important since they define the region of operation of the BJT. As you can see in figure P3 — right, these curves show the relation between collector current and collector- emitter voltage will at each value of base current, I,. As you can see, I, controls the collector current.The operating regions of the BJT. Operating Region De De Features Cavoft | __‘Reverse Reverse T=le=I,=0 Saturation | __ Forward Forward Va =0 ‘Active Reverse Forward ‘Amplifier [7 Reverse-active Forward Reverse Limited Use An interesting feature of the ousput curves makes clear how a BJT can be used as an amplificr. As you can see in these curves, after a certain q, voltage, the value of I, remains almost constant. ‘This suggests the definition of: a pate which is the DC gain of the BJT. Note that a small base current, results in a much larger collector current, thus the signal is amplified. ‘The operating regions of the BJT can also be scen in the output characteristic curves. Figure P4 shows which part of the curve represents which region of operation, 1 os Pay) oa 02 ° 0204 06 eV ve Figure P3~ Leff The input charactetistic curve, I, V5. Vag. Right "The output characteristic curves, Ics. Voy @ certain I, Saturation Region MeV Figure P3 ~ The operating regions of the BJT Active Region Cut-off Region1) Spice Simulation of a BJT In this section of the experiment, you will simulate a simple BJT circuit in spice, to get the input and output characteristic cusves. 1. Create a new project file in Capture Student and select analog or mixed A/D. 2. Hook up the circuit shown in figure 1. The Q2N2222 transistor is in evallib part library. You may also use the part search, to find this part. Note that this crit cannot be practically used without a resistor to limit the current in either collector or eter. 3. In Capture, from PSpice menu, select New Simulation Profile. Enter DC as the name and select none for the inheritance option. 4, In Simulation Settings dialog box, under Analysis —> Analysis type, select DC sweep. 5. Fillin the other settings as in figure 2. This will cause the source V1 to sweep from OV to 5V in O.1V increments, while V2 is constant. As a result, the values of I, and Vy ‘can be measured in the simulation as V1 changes. So the input characteristic curves can be obtained by this simulation Switch to the Orcad PSpice A/D window. In Plot menu, select Axis Settings..., in X-axis sertings Select Axis Variable... and from the lst on the left select VB(Ql), 8. Click the add trace button F, and from the left lis, select 1B(Q1). 9. How does the curve you get compare to that of a diode? 10. Change the value of voltage source V2 to 10V and rerun your simulation 11. Does the input characteristic curve change? 10 o2n2222 Bvde vl | | Figure 1— A simple common-emitter configuration used to measure the input characteristic with spice simulationEen as Generel Anas | nce Fes | LRvates| Sti | Opn | Data Calcion | Pobe Wr | Sweep vaible Yotage souce Hane: © Caner sec © Globe paemeter © Model parameter © Temperotee Sweep bpe ee Stat vee: [0 Endvae: (F © Logasttnic [Ta =] pcrement: — [OOT © Vel it Figure 2 ~ DC-sweep settings for simulation of the characteristic curves Now use the same circuit to generate some output characteristic curves of the BJT. 1, Add a new PSpice simulation Profile. 2. Set the DC-Sweep settings this time for voltage source V2 from 0 to 10V with 0.1V increments. 3. Set the value of voltage source V1 to 2V. 4. Run your simulation and draw the curves of IC(Ql) vs. VC(QU). 5. How do your curves match with those you saw in the prelab? 6. Change the value of voltage source V1 to 0, 1, and 4V and redo steps 4 and 5. 7. How do you compare the results? 2) Measurement of Characteristic Curves In this section of the experiment, you will measure the output characteristic curves of @ BJT with a simple circuit. You should use Lab View to automate the process, 1. Hook up the circuit shown in figure 3 on your bread-board, 2. Connect the multi-meter in series with the base resistor. 3. Change the supply voltage V1, till you get a base current of [, = 5014. Take a note from the supply voltage you used. Disconnect the multi-meter and connect it as a voltmeter to measure Vi Set the supply voltage V1 to the value you found in step 3. Now using LabView change the voltage of the supply voltage V2 in 0.5V steps fom 0 to 5 and take measuzements of 1, ‘Now connect the multi-meter in series with R2,0 Figure 3 Simple circuit for measurement of the output characteristic curves. 8. Repeat step 6, but now measure I, 9. Make a plot from your measured values of I, vs. Ve 10. Compare your results with what you got in part 1 11, Ifyou have enough time, repeat steps 3 to 10 with 1, ~0, 1, ~ 100.4 3) Practical Considerations ‘eis essential to have some practical issues in mind when designing circuits using BJT. In this section you will earn about temperature effects on the BJT, break-down voltage, and maximum power considerations. ‘Temperature E fects “The temperature of the BJT’ has direct effect on its characteristic curves. If you look at manufacturers specifications for a BJT, you will see that the curves are given typically at 25°C (77°F). To see the temperature dni, you can do the following experiment: 1. Set the supply voltage V1 to 3V and supply voltage V2 to 5V. Connect the multi-meter in series with R2 to measure I, Let a soldering. iron warm up. at the tip of the soldering iron near the cap of the BJT’s package. Monitor the multi-meter for changes in the measured current. Let the BJT cool down and again monitor the measured current. Warning: Be careful not to burn yourself or the BJT with the soldering iron! Breakdown Vltage Like the case of the diode, the transistor also shows breakdown effects if extreme voltages are applied to it. The characteristic curves actually look like figure 4. Usually the BJT gets damaged if voltages higher than the breakdown voltage are applied to it.Figure 4 ~The collector characteristic of a BJT, Vis the breakdown voltage. Power Constraints ‘The transistor dissipates power mostly as heat. The heat generated by the BJT, goes ‘through the packaging of the device and cools down in the air. If the amount of heat generated by the BJT is more than what can be absorbed by the environment, the device’s temperature rises. This can damage or burn out the device. The amount of power dissipated bby a device can be formulated as the product of the voltage and current on the terminals of the device. Since the base current is negligible compared to the collector current, the power dissipated by a BJT can be approximated by P=Velc. For a maximum allowed power dissipation P,,,, the region which will damage the device will be a parabola as shown in figure 5, Figure 5 ~ ‘The maximum power limit region shown on the characteristic curves.