5 Dynamic Characteristics I.docVIP

Dynamic Characteristics I 5.1 Switching Times In practice, changes in the state of conduction of the transistor take time to occur. These cause delays in the response of the output to changes at the input. Consider the circuit in Fig. 5.1. Fig. 5.1 Non-Instantaneous Switching in the Transistor Inverter Fig. 5.2 shows the sequence of events during turn-on and turn-off of the transistor. The following characteristic switching times can be identified. Delay Time, td This is the delay between switching on the input base current to the transistor and the point at which the transistor reaches cut-in and enters the forward active mode. During this time, the transistor is not truly conducting but ionization currents are flowing which essentially charge up the base-emitter and base-collector junction capacitances. The length of this duration is usually quite small compared with the other switching times and can be neglected. Fall-Time, tf Note that the fall-time for the output voltage is, in fact, the rise time of the collector current. During this time, the transistor is operating in the forward active mode, passing between cut-off and saturation. Note that the collector current reaches its maximum value at the edge of saturation, even though the charge stored in the base of the transistor continues to rise as the transistor is overdriven into heavy saturation. The fall-time is usually estimated between the 90( and 10( points on the output voltage profile. Storage-Time, ts This is the time between the point at which the input voltage is brought low and that at which the output voltage begins to rise, or correspondingly, the point at which the collector current begins to fall. During this time, the transistor is still in the saturation region. Hence the collector current remains at its maximum saturation value, IC MAX, during this time. In effect what is happening is that the volume of excess minority charge stored in the base, which has been put in by overdri