Electronic Circuit Design

(Preliminaries)
 Introduction
• To design any electrical circuit,
either analog or digital, electrical engineers need
to be able to predict the voltages and currents at
all places within the circuit.
• Linear circuits, that is, circuits wherein the
outputs are linearly dependent on the inputs, can
be analyzed by hand using complex analysis.
• Simple nonlinear circuits can also be analyzed in
this way.
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 Transistors
• Two main categories of transistors:
– bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) and
– field effect transistors (FETs).
• Transistors have 3 terminals where the application of
current (BJT) or voltage (FET) to the input terminal
increases the amount of charge in the active region.
• The physics of "transistor action" is quite different for the
BJT and FET.
• In analog circuits, transistors are used in amplifiers and
linear regulated power supplies.
• In digital circuits they function as electrical switches,
including logic gates, random access memory (RAM), and
microprocessors.

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 History
• Before transistors were invented, circuits used vacuum tubes:
– Fragile, large in size, heavy, generate large quantities of heat, require a large
amount of power
• The first transistors were created at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1947
– William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain created the transistors in
and effort to develop a technology that would overcome the problems of
tubes
– The first patents for the principle of a field effect transistor were registered in
1928 by Julius Lillenfield.
– Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain had referenced this material in their work
• The word “transistor” is a combination of the terms “transconductance”
and “variable resistor”
• Today an advanced microprossesor can have as many as 1.7 billion
transistors.

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 Background Science
• Conductors • Insulators
– Ex: Metals – Ex: Plastics
– Flow of electricity – Flow of electricity
governed by motion of governed by motion of
free electrons ions that break free
– As temperature – As temperature
increases, conductivity increases, conductivity
decreases due to more increases due to lattice
lattice atom collisions of vibrations breaking free
electrons ions
– Idea of – Irrelevant because
superconductivity conductive temperature
beyond melting point
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 Point-Contact Transistor
(first transistor ever made)

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 Modern Transistors

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Understanding of BJT

force – voltage/current
water flow – current
- amplification

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 Architecture of BJTs
• The bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is constructed
with three doped semiconductor regions separated
by two pn junctions
• Regions are called emitter, base and collector

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 Architecture of BJTs
• There are two types of BJTs, the npn and pnp
• The two junctions are termed the base-emitter junction and
the base-collector junction
• The term bipolar refers to the use of both holes and electrons
as charge carriers in the transistor structure
• In order for the transistor to operate properly, the two
junctions must have the correct dc bias voltages
– the base-emitter (BE) junction is forward biased(>=0.7V for
Si, >=0.3V for Ge)
– the base-collector (BC) junction is reverse biased

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 Transistor symbols

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 Recall p-n junction
P N N P

W W
+ - + -

Vappl > 0 Vappl < 0

Forward bias, + on P, - on N Reverse bias, + on N, - on P

(Shrink W, Vbi) (Expand W, Vbi)

Allow holes to jump over barrier Remove holes and electrons away
into N region as minority carriers from depletion region
I I

V
V

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 PNP transistor amplifier action

IN (small)

OUT (large)

Clearly this works in common emitter configuration

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 Basic circuits of BJT

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 Operation of BJTs
• BJT will operates in one of following four
region
– Cutoff region (for digital circuit)
– Saturation region (for digital circuit)
– Linear (active) region (to be an amplifier)
– Breakdown region (always be a disaster)

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 Operation of BJTs

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 Operation Mode

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 DC Analysis of BJTs
• Transistor Currents:
IE = IC + IB
• alpha (DC)
IC = DCIE
• beta (DC)
IC = DCIB
– DC typically has a value between 20 and 200

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 DC Analysis of BJTs
• DC voltages for the biased transistor:
– Collector voltage
VC = VCC - ICRC
– Base voltage
VB = VE + VBE

– for silicon transistors, VBE = 0.7 V

– for germanium transistors, VBE = 0.3 V

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 Q-point
• The base current, IB,
is established by the
base bias.
• The point at which
the base current
curve intersects the
dc load line is the
quiescent or Q-point
for the circuit

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 BJT DC Analysis - Summary
• Calculating the Q-point for BJT is the first step in analyzing the
circuit
• To summarize:
– We ignored the AC (variable) source
• Short circuit the voltage sources
• Open Circuit the current sources
– We applied KVL to the base-emitter circuit and using load line analysis
on the base-emitter characteristics, we obtained the base current Q-
point
– We then applied KVL to the collector-emitter circuit and using load
line analysis on the collector-emitter characteristics, we obtained the
collector current and voltage Q-point
• This process is also called DC Analysis
• We now proceed to perform AC Analysis

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 AC Analysis Base-Emitter Circuit

From this graph, we find:

At Maximum Input Voltage:
VBE = 0.63 V, iB = 24 µA
At Minimum Input Voltage:
VBE = 0.59 V, iB = 15 µA
Recall: At Q-point:
VBE = 0.6 V, iB = 20 µA

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 BJT AC Analysis - Summary
• AC analysis can be performed via a graphical processes
– Find the maximum and minimum values of the input
parameters (e.g., base current for a BJT)
– Use the transistor characteristics to calculate the output
parameters (e.g., collector current for a BJT).

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 BJT configurations

IE = IB + IC ………(KCL)

VEC = VEB + VBC ……… (KVL)

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 Field-Effect Transistors
• Field-effect transistors (FETs) are probably the
simplest form of transistor
– Widely used in both analogue and digital applications
– They are characterized by a very high input resistance
and small physical size, and they can be used to form
circuits with a low power consumption
– They are widely used in very large-scale integration
– Two basic forms:
• insulated gate FETs
• junction gate FETs

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 An Overview of Field-Effect Transistors
• Many forms, but basic operation is the same
– A voltage on a control input produces an electric field
that affects the current between two other terminals
– When considering
amplifiers we looked
at a circuit using a
‘control device’
– A FET is a suitable
control device

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 Continue….
• Notation
– FETs are 3 terminal devices
• drain (d)
• source (s)
• gate(g)
– The gate is the control
input
– Diagram illustrates the
notation used for labelling
voltages and currents

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 FET Characteristics
• While MOSFETs and JFETs operate in different
ways, their characteristics are quite similar
• Input characteristics
– In both MOSFETs and JFETs the gate is effectively
insulated from the remainder of the device
• Output characteristics
– Consider n-channel devices
– Usually the drain is more positive than the source
– The drain voltage affects the thickness of the channel

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 FET output characteristics

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 Transfer characteristics
– similar shape for all forms of FET – but with a
different offset
– not a linear response, but over a small region
might be considered to approximate a linear
response

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 Normal operating ranges for FETs

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 Continue….
• When operating about its operating point we can
describe the transfer characteristic by the change
in output that is caused by a certain change in the
input
– This corresponds to the slope of the earlier curves
– This quantity has units of current/voltage, which is the
reciprocal of resistance (this is conductance)
– Since this quantity described the transfer
characteristics it is called the transconductance, gm
Note: ID I
g 
m g  D m
VGS VGS

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 Summary of FET Characteristics
• FETS have three terminals: drain, source and gate
• The gate is the control input
• Two polarities of device: n-channel and p-channel
• Two main forms of FET: MOSFET and JFET
• In each case the drain current is controlled by the
voltage applied to the gate with respect to the source
• Behavior is characterized by the transconductance
• The operating point differs between devices

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 FET circuit symbols

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 FET Amplifiers
• A simple DE MOSFET amplifier
– RG is used to ‘bias’ the
gate at its correct operating
point (which for a
DE MOSFET is 0 V)
– C is a coupling capacitor
and is used to couple the
AC signal while preventing
externals circuits from
affecting the bias
– this is an AC-coupled amplifier

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 MOSFET
• Such devices are sometimes called IGFETs
(insulated-gate field-effect transistors) or
sometimes MOSFETs (metal oxide
semiconductor field-effect transistors)
• Digital circuits constructed using these devices
are usually described as using MOS
technology
• Here we will describe them as MOSFETs

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 Construction

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 Operation
– Gate volt controls the thickness of the channel
– Consider an n-channel device,
• Making the gate more positive attracts
electrons to the gate and makes the gate region
thicker – reducing the resistance of the
channel. The channel is said to be enhanced
• Making the gate more negative repels electrons
from the gate and makes the gate region
thinner – increasing the resistance of the
channel. The channel is said to be depleted

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 Effect of varying the gate voltage

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 MOSFET circuit symbols

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 Junction-Gate Field-Effect Transistors
• Sometimes known as a JUGFET
• Here we will use another common name – the
JFET
• Here the insulated gate of a MOSFET is
replaced with a reverse-biased pn junction
• Since the gate junction is always reverse-
biased no current flows into the gate and it
acts as if it were insulated

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 Construction

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 Operation
– The reverse-biased gate junction produced a
depletion layer in the region of the channel
– The gate volt controls the thickness of the depletion
layer and hence the thickness of the channel
– consider an n-channel device
• The gate will always be negative with respect to the
source to keep the junction between the gate and
the channel reverse-biased
• Making the gate more negative increases the
thickness of the depletion layer, reducing the width
of the channel – increasing the resistance of the
channel.

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 Effect of varying the gate voltage

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 JFET circuit symbols

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 Key Points
• FETs are widely used in both analogue and digital circuits
• They have high input resistance and small physical size
• There are two basic forms of FET: MOSFETs and JFETs
• MOSFETs may be divided into DE and Enhancement types
• In each case the gate voltage controls the current from the
drain to the source
• The characteristics of the various forms of FET are similar
except that they require different bias voltages
• The use of coupling capacitors prevents the amplification of
DC and produced AC amplifiers
• FETs can be used to produce various forms of amplifier and
a range of other circuit applications

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