Darlington Pair

ac is a major factor in determining input resistance of amplifier. ac of transistor limits maximum achievable input resistance from

an emitter-follower circuit. Revise emitter-follower (common collector) configuration :

Darlington Pair
Darlington pair can be used to boost input resistance. Collectors of two transistors are connected and the emitter of the

first drives base of the second.

Darlington Pair
If Ib1 is the base current for the first transistor, the emitter current

Ie1 would be approximately ac1Ie1. Ie1 then will be the base current for the second transistor. So,

Ie2 ac2Ie1 = ac1ac2Ib1

Effective current gain of Darlington pair is,

ac = ac1ac2
Neglecting re by assuming it is much smaller than RE (re<<RE),

Rin = ac1ac2RE
Darlington pair thus provides high input impedance.

Darlington Pair
Emitter-follower often used as interface between a circuit with high

output resistance and low-resistance load. This is also known as buffer. With a low input impedance, a significant current would start flowing and the emitter-follower would draw energy from the signal sources. None of the typical signal sources is designed to deliver energy on its outputs. The high impedance of Darlington pair input draws no energy, thereby avoiding these issues.

Darlington Pair

Darlington Pair
For common-emitter amplifer, given Vcc = 12 V, Rc = 1.0 k and

re = 5 . For Darlington pair, given R1 = 10 k, R2 = 22 k, RE = 22 , RL = 8 , Vcc = 12 V and DC = AC = 100.

a) Determine the voltage gain of the common-emitter amplifier. b) Determine the voltage gain of the Darlington emitter-follower. c) Determine the overall voltage gain.

Darlington Pair
Solution : (a) Find re for Darlington pair, start with DC bias analysis
2 R2 || DC RE 20k VB VCC 12V 8 V 2 R1 R2 || DC RE 30k

IE

VE VB 2VBE 8 1.4 6.6 300mA RE RE 22 22 25mV 25mV 83m IE 300mA

r 'e

Darlington Pair
Next, find total input resistance to the Darlington pair. For this we will use AC analysis
2 Rin (tot ) R1 || R2 || ac (r 'e Re )

We can not neglect RE since it is not much larger than re, Re in this case is ac emitter resistance of the Darlington pair,

Re RE || RL 22 || 8 5.87

Thus,

Rin (tot ) 10k || 22k || 1002 (83m 5.87) 6.16 k

Rc RC || Rin (tot ) 1k || 6.16 k 860

So, the effective ac collector resistance of common-emitter is

Darlington Pair
Voltage gain for the common-emitter amplifier stage is,

Av

Rc 860 172 r 'e 5

re in this case is for the common-emitters transistor.

(b) Voltage gain for Darlington emitter follower is,

Av

Re 5.87 0.99 r 'e Re 83 m 5.87

Darlington Pair
(c) Overall gain is,

Av 172 (0.99 ) 170