Bipolar Transistor BJT University of Pittsburgh（双极型晶体管是匹兹堡大学）.pdf

Bipolar Transistor Basics In the Diode tutorials we saw that simple diodes are made up from two pieces of semiconductor material, either silicon or germanium to form a simple PN-junction and we also learnt about their properties and characteristics. If we now join together two individual signal diodes back-to-back, this will give us two PN-junctions connected together in series that share a common P or N terminal. The fusion of these two diodes produces a three layer, two junction, three terminal device forming the basis of a Bipolar Transistor, or BJT for short. Transistors are three terminal active devices made from different semiconductor materials that can act as either an insulator or a conductor by the application of a small signal voltage. The transistors ability to change between these two states enables it to have two basic functions: switching (digital electronics) or amplification (analogue electronics). Then bipolar transistors have the ability to operate within three different regions: • 1. Active Region - the transistor operates as an amplifier and Ic = β.Ib • • 2. Saturation - the transistor is fully-ON operating as a switch and Ic = I(saturation) • • 3. Cut-off - the transistor is fully-OFF operating as a switch and Ic = 0 Typical Bipolar Transistor The word Transistor is an acronym, and is a combination of the words Transfer Varistor used to describe their mode of operation way back in their early days of development. There are two basic types of bipolar transistor construction, NPN and PNP, which basically describes the physical arrangement of the P-type and N-type semiconductor materials from which they are made. The Bipolar Transistor basic construction consists of two PN-junctions producing three connecting terminals with each terminal being given a name to identify it fro