Electro Technologies

Semiconductor Activity

Name:___________________________

In this activity you will use various semiconductors to explore what they
do and how they work.

You will need:

• solderless breadboard
• power supply (set to 9V)
• 4 alligator leads
• 470Ω resistor
• 10kΩ resistor
• 100kΩ potentiometer
• green LED
• red LED
• 2x NPN transistors (2N4401)
• 1x PNP transistor (2N4403)
• 1x 555 timer
• 1 pushbutton switch
• hook up wires

LED exploration

Since LEDs are diodes, they only work one way in a circuit. It can be quite
frustrating to be trying a circuit and it's not working only to find out later
that you had the LED in backwards.

With a breadboard wire up this circuit:

Now you don't know the trick to figure

out which way the LED should go in,
yet…

Looking at your two LEDs, you'll see that

they have one lead shorter than the
other like this:

Try both LEDs (one at a time) with the long

lead as the negative side and then the long
lead as the positive side.

Which way do the LEDs light up?

Now you know the trick. The long lead is the anode or positive side. The
short lead is the cathode or negative side.

There's also another trick to figure things out.

Some LEDs have a flat section on their case, look

closely at the green LED and you should see it
like in the picture:

If you look the flat side lines up with the short

lead. That means the flat side is the cathode or
negative side. Not all LEDs have the flat side, if
you look at the red one you'll see it doesn't have
one.

Now you should be asking yourself, if LEDs only work one way, why did
the "lamps" we used in previous activities work either way? A clue comes
in that depending on which way you plugged them in you got red or
green.

Here is the schematic symbol for our lamps:

If you look there's not just one LED symbol in
the symbol. Further they LED symbols point in
different directions.

So seeing this why do you think this LED

works in both directions?

_____________________________________________________

Transistor exploration

Now we will look at transistors. There are two transistors we will use, one
NPN and one PNP. The part numbers are 2N4401 for the NPN transistor
and 2N4403 for the PNP. This is printed on the flat face of the transistor.
These two are called complementary transistors as they have the same
electrical characteristics (maximum current, maximum voltage, maximum
frequency, etc.) but are NPN and PNP. There are other complementary
transistors with different electrical characteristics as well.

For both transistors the pin out looks like this:

With the flat face towards you the emitter is on the left, the collector is on
the right and the base is in the middle. Note, this is not necessarily true
for all transistors and you should check the data sheet for the particular
transistor to make sure you hook it up correctly.

As a reminder the symbol for transistors look like this:

With the one on the left

being the NPN transistor
(remember the arrow
points outwards on the
NPN transistor).

There will be a new symbol in these schematics:

Now the word "Touch" is just a label and can be
anything, but the little arrow means an input to the
circuit.

In this case it will simply be a wire that isn't attached to the breadboard
at one end. When the time comes you'll touch the free end as part of the
experiment.

So wire up this circuit on a

breadboard:

Power it on (not touching the

touch wire) and what happens?

Now touch the wire and what

happens?

Let's take some measurements and see what's going on.

First set up the multimeter to take a

current reading between you and the
touch wire. It will work the best if you
hold both metal ends of the multimeter
probes, one in each hand, while holding
the touch wire end to the negative probe.
Set the multimeter on the 200µA setting (that is 200 micro amps). A
micro amp is 1 millionth of an amp.

Turn on the power and touch the

wire and multimeter probes as
describe and record the reading
here:
Next set up the multimeter to take a
current reading between the
transistor and the resistor.

Now set the multimeter to the

200mA (milliamps) setting turn the
circuit on and touch the wire. Turn
the multimeter dial to lower and
lower ranges (e.g. to 20mA, then to
2000µA and so on) until you get a reading. Record that here:

What do you notice about the different current readings at this point?

Now make this circuit:

It is basically the same circuit

except now there's a second
transistor hooked up between the
first transistor and the touch wire.

Turn on the power and touch the

wire. What happens this time?

To add some more data to our

exploration, hook up the multimeter
so that it again is taking a current
reading between the transistor and the
resistor like this:

Turn on the power and touch the wire

and record the current here:

________________________________
So how does this current reading compare to the previous ones?

What you are seeing in this circuit is one of the things we use transistors
for, amplification.

The way it works in this circuit is like this: all around us in the building
there are electrical wires that bring the AC electricity to the wall sockets.
Since this turns on and off 60 times a second it generates weak radio
waves. When you touch the wire your body acts like an antenna and
converts the radio waves back into a VERY weak electrical current (so
weak it's barely detectable with our multimeter). However, the transistor
can detect it and it amplifies it to a much stronger current, but one that is
not strong enough to turn on the LED. So by adding a second transistor
we amplify the weak current from the first to the point where it can turn
on the LED.

Now let us look at the other function of transistors, which is to act like a
switch.

Hook up this circuit.

Set the power
supply to 9V.

Turn it on and
record what
happens when you
push the button:

Next set up this circuit.

Note that it uses the PNP
2N4403 transistor instead:

What happens this time

when you press the
button?
In both these cases the transistor acts like a switch. The NPN transistor
turns on when current is applied to the base, while the PNP transistor
turns off when current is applied to the base.

Integrated circuit investigation.

Now you're going to build a couple of circuits using the 555 timer IC.

First you're going to build this:

A couple of things to note: first you'll see there's no direct line between
the battery and the rest of the circuit. There are arrows that say +9V and
the ground symbols. It is assumed that these are all connected, the +9V
to each other and the grounds to each other. It is common in schematics
to not directly show the power supply, just its connections. Often for
digital logic ICs the power supply pins aren't even shown.

Second you'll see the 555 chip is just a square. The pins are numbered on
the diagram. Note they are not in the order they are on the chip. This is
also common. Remember how pins are numbered on a chip! Check your
notes or D2L if you are uncertain!.

Once you have it connected turn it on. What happens when you turn the
dial of the potentiometer?

The circuit you just built is called a astable mutlivibrator, which is a type
of oscillator. It simply turns current on and off in a regular interval. Get
the teacher to show you how to hook the oscilloscope up to the pin 3
output and you can see what the waveform of the output looks like. Turn
the dial of the potentiometer so that the LED appears constantly on.
Check the wave on the oscilloscope. Is it on constantly? What does it look
like?

Finally you'll make this circuit:

Wire it up and press the button, what happens?

This type of circuit is known as a monostable multivibrator, or one-shot

timer. It creates a pulse of a specific duration when triggered by it's
input.

Hook the oscilloscope up to pin 3 and press the button, what does the
output look like?

Now that you are done, hand this in for marking. Make sure you've seen
the videos and answered the questions on D2L for semiconductors.