Lecture

Transistors: Operation and Characteristics

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In course

EE-203: Electronics II

Ce cours introduit les composants à semiconducteurs électroniques de base : diodes à jonction PN, transistors bipolaires et MOS. Leurs modes de fonctionnement en DC et AC sont étudiés. Les circuits élémentaires à base de transistors bipolaires sont prése ...

Description

This lecture covers the operation and characteristics of transistors, focusing on bipolar transistors and NMOS structures. Topics include the flow of electrons and holes, current dependencies on voltage, and different operating modes such as normal running and saturated mode. The instructor explains the creation of channels, weak inversion, and the impact of biasing on transistor behavior.

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Instructors (3)

Adil Koukab

Cédric Meinen

Teaching & PhD Courses Electrical systems and electronics I EE-295 The course has the aim to provide the fundamental knowledge and experiences to understand basic electrical systems. Electrical systems and electronics II EE-296 The basic concepts enabling to understand and analysis the electronic systems dedicated to signals acquisition and processing (e.g. biosensors, physiological signals, ECG) are addressed. This includes the acquisition, amplification and filtering. El

Stéphanie Lacour

Stéphanie P. Lacour holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology in the School of Engineering at EPFL and leads the Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from INSA de Lyon, France, and completed postdoctoral research at Princeton University and the University of Cambridge. She is the recipient of the 2006 MIT TR35, a University Research Fellowship of the Royal Society, European Research Council ERC Starting and POC Grants, and a SNSF-ERC Consolidator Grant. She was elected a 2015 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Condensed matter physics: Solid-state physics

Related concepts (32)

Transistor

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal.

Bipolar junction transistor

A bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is a type of transistor that uses both electrons and electron holes as charge carriers. In contrast, a unipolar transistor, such as a field-effect transistor (FET), uses only one kind of charge carrier. A bipolar transistor allows a small current injected at one of its terminals to control a much larger current flowing between the terminals, making the device capable of amplification or switching. BJTs use two p–n junctions between two semiconductor types, n-type and p-type, which are regions in a single crystal of material.

Field-effect transistor

The field-effect transistor (FET) is a type of transistor that uses an electric field to control the flow of current in a semiconductor. FETs (JFETs or MOSFETs) are devices with three terminals: source, gate, and drain. FETs control the flow of current by the application of a voltage to the gate, which in turn alters the conductivity between the drain and source. FETs are also known as unipolar transistors since they involve single-carrier-type operation.

Point-contact transistor

The point-contact transistor was the first type of transistor to be successfully demonstrated. It was developed by research scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell Laboratories in December 1947. They worked in a group led by physicist William Shockley. The group had been working together on experiments and theories of electric field effects in solid state materials, with the aim of replacing vacuum tubes with a smaller device that consumed less power.

History of the transistor

A transistor is a semiconductor device with at least three terminals for connection to an electric circuit. In the common case, the third terminal controls the flow of current between the other two terminals. This can be used for amplification, as in the case of a radio receiver, or for rapid switching, as in the case of digital circuits. The transistor replaced the vacuum-tube triode, also called a (thermionic) valve, which was much larger in size and used significantly more power to operate.

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