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EEE 4670 -Electronics Engineering III

Lecture 4: Biasing of Bipolar Junction Transistors

Dr. Brilliant Habeenzu

Email: brilliant.habeenzu@unza.zm
hakhabeen@gmail.com
 CC (Emitter-Follower) configuration
The output can be taken off the emitter terminal
in the CC configuration (emitter follower configuration).

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 DC analysis of CC configuration
If (β+1)RE is much larger than the R2, the current IB will be much smaller than I2. If we
accept the approximation that IB is essentially 0A compared to I1 or I2, then I1=I2 and R1
and R2 can be considered series elements.
The voltage across R2 is actually the base voltage, can be determined using the voltage-
divider rule.
R2
VB  VCC
R1  R2
If (   1) RE   RE  10 R2
the approximate approach can be applied with
, a high degree of accuracy.

VE VB  VBE
VE  VB  VBE IE  
RE RE

VE  I E RE 4
Biasing of Common Base configuration

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 Common-Base configuration
The applied signal is connected to the emitter terminal and the base is ground in the
common base configuration.
It has a very low input impedance, high output impedance, and good voltage gain. A
typical common-base configuration appears in the Fig. below. The base is the common
terminal between the input emitter terminal and output collector terminal.

Common-Base configuration

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 Common-Base configuration
Applying KVL will result in

 VEE  I E RE  VBE  0 VEE  VBE

IE 
RE
Applying KVL to the entire outside perimeter of the
network will result in

 VEE  I E R E VCE  I C RC  VCC  0 Input DC

Because I E  IC equivalent

VCE  VEE  VCC  I E ( RC  RE )

The voltage VCB can be found by applying KVL to the
output loop to obtain:
VCB  I C RC  VCC  0 Using I C  I E

VCB  VCC  I C RC Determining

VCE and VCB
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Example:
Determine the current IE and IB and the voltage VCE and VCB for the common-base
configuration of Fig.

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Solution:
VEE  VBE 4V  0.7V
IE    2.75mA
RE 1.2k
IE 2.75mA
IB    45.08A
  1 60  1
VCE  VEE  VCC  I E ( RC  RE )
 4V  10V  (2.75mA)( 2.4k  1.2k)  4.1V
VCB  VCC  I C RC  VCC   I B RC
 10V  (60)( 45.08A)( 2.4k)  3.51V

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 Working principle of transistor amplification
Input signal V1=0.02 sinωt is applied to the base. Base current varies depending on the input
signal. Collector current varies depending on the base current. Collector current is much larger
than the base current by the amplifying effect.

Collector
Base current current Base current

Collector emitter
voltage
Base emitter
voltage
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 Working principle of

voltage(V)
transistor amplification

Input
The variation of input voltage is 0.02V

current
Base
The variation of base current is 5 μA
The variation of collector current is 0.65mA
The variation of collector voltage is 2.0V.

Collector
current
Collector voltage(V)
The current gain is (0.65mA)/(5μA)=130
The voltage gain is (-2V)/(0.02V)=-100
The power gain is 130×100=13000

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 Transistor Switching Networks
The application of transistors is not limited solely to the amplification of signals. Transistors
can be used as switches for computer and control applications. The network shown below can
be employed as an inverter in computer logic circuitry. The operating point switch from cutoff
to saturation along the load line. When Vi=5V, the transistor will be “on” and the design must
ensure that the network is heavily saturated by a level of IB greater than that associated with
the IB curve appearing near the saturation level.

The saturation collector current For the saturation level, the following condition
is defined by must be satisfied.

VCC I Csat
I Csa t  IB 
RC  dc

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 For the network of Fig. when Vi=5V, the resulting level of IB is
Vi  0.7V 5V  0.7V VCC 5V
I B   63A and I Csa t    6.1mA
RB 68k RC 0.82k
I Csat 6.1mA
Therefore, I B  63A    48.8A
 dc 125
Which is satisfied. For Vi=0V, IB=0A, IC=0mA, voltage drop across RC is 0V, resulting
in VC=+5V.

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 At saturation, the current IC is quite high and voltage VCE is very low. The result is a
resistance level between the two terminals determined by
Using a typical average value of VCEsat such as 0.15V gives
VCEsat
Rsat  VCEsat 0.15V
I Csat Rsat    24.6
I Csat 6.1mA
Which is a relatively low and can be considered as approximately 0Ω when placed in
series with resistors in the kΩ range. For Vi=0V, the cutoff condition results in a resistance
level of the following magnitude:
VCC 5V
Rcutoff     resulting in the open-circuit equivalence
I CEO 0mA
For a typical value of ICEO=10μA, the magnitude of the cutoff resistance is
VCC 5V
Rcutoff    500k
I CEO 10 A

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Saturation conditions and resulting terminal resistance Cutoff conditions and resulting terminal resistance
Example:
Determine RB and RC for the transistor inverter of Fig. below, if Icsat
=10mA

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 Solution:
VCC 10V 10V
At saturation , I C  and 10mA  so that RC   1k
RC RC 10mA
I Csat 10mA
At saturation , I B    40 A Choosing I B  60A
 dc 250
Vi  0.7V
to ensure saturation and using I B 
RB
Vi  0.7V 10V  0.7V
We obtain RB    155k
IB 60A
Choose RB  150k, which is a standard value. Then
Vi  0.7V 10V  0.7V
IB    62A
RB 150k
I Csat
and I B  62A   40 A
 DC
Therefore, use RB  150k and RC  1k 16
 The impact on the speed of response of the collector output is defined by the collector current
response of Fig. below. The total time required for the
transistor to switch from the “off” to the “on” state is designated as ton and is defined by

t on  t r  t d
with td the delay time between the changing state of the input and the beginning of a response at
the output. tr is the rise time from 10% to 90% of the final value.

The total time required for a transistor to

switch from the “on” to the “off” state is
referred to as toff and is defined by

toff  t s  t f
Where ts is the storage time and tf is
the fall time from 90% to 10% of
the final value.

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