SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES: TRANSISTOR APPLICATION

Submitted in the partial fulfillment of the Degree of Bachelor of Technology

(Integrated)
In
Computer Science and Engineering

SUBMITTED BY: - GUIDED BY:

Name – KANIKA MEHTA Mr.Princejit Singh
Regd. No 10902338
Roll no RB1902A63

SUBMITTED TO
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Lovely Professional University
Phagwara

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I take this opportunity to present my votes of thanks to all those guidepost who really
acted as lightening pillars to enlighten our way throughout this project that has led to
successful and satisfactory completion of this study.
We are really grateful to our HOD for providing us with an opportunity to undertake
this project in this university and providing us with all the facilities. I am highly
thankful to Mr. Princejit Singh for his active support, valuable time and advice,
whole-hearted guidance, sincere cooperation and pains-taking involvement during the
study and in completing the assignment of preparing the said project within the time
stipulated.
Lastly, I am thankful to all those, particularly the various friends , who have been
instrumental in creating proper, healthy and conductive environment and including
new and fresh innovative ideas for me during the project, their help, it would have
been extremely difficult for us to prepare the project in a time bound framework.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction
2. Semiconductor Devices
3. List of common Semiconductor Devices
4. Introduction to transistor
5. uses and importance of a transistor
6. Transistor as a switch
7. Transistor as an amplifier
8. advantages and limitations over vacuum tubes

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Introduction
Semiconductor devices such as diodes,
transistors and integrated circuits can be
found everywhere in our daily lives, in
Walkman, televisions, automobiles,
washing machines and computers. We
have come to rely on them and
increasingly have come to expect higher
performance at lower cost.
Personal computers clearly illustrate this
trend. Anyone who wants to replace a
three to five year old computer finds that
the trade-in value of his or her computer
is surprising low. On the bright side, one
finds that the complexity and
performance of the today’s personal
computers vastly exceeds that of their
old computer and that for about the same
purchase price, adjusted for inflation.
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While this economic reality reflects the
massive growth of the industry, it is hard
to even imagine a similar growth in any
other industry. For instance, in the
automobile industry, no one would even
expect a five times faster car with a five
times larger capacity at the same price
when comparing to what was offered
five years ago. Nevertheless, when it
comes to personal computers, such
expectations are very realistic.
The essential fact which has driven the
successful growth of the computer
industry is that through industrial skill
and technological advances one manages
to make smaller and smaller transistors.
These devices deliver year after year
better performance while consuming less
power and because of their smaller size
they can also be manufactured at a lower
cost per device.

Semiconductor
device
Semiconductor devices are electronic
components that exploit the electronic
properties of semiconductor materials,
principally silicon, germanium, and
gallium arsenide. Semiconductor devices
have replaced thermionic devices
(vacuum tubes) in most applications.
They use electronic conduction in the
solid state as opposed to the gaseous
state or thermionic emission in a high
vacuum.
Semiconductor devices are
manufactured both as single discrete
devices and as integrated circuits (ICs),
which consist of a number—from a few
to millions—of devices manufactured
and interconnected on a single
semiconductor substrate.
Semiconductor device
materials
By far, silicon (Si) is the most widely
used material in semiconductor devices.
Its combination of low raw material cost,
relatively simple processing, and a
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useful temperature range make it
currently the best compromise among
the various competing materials.
Germanium (Ge) was a widely used
early semiconductor material but its
thermal sensitivity makes it less useful
than silicon. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is
also widely used in high-speed devices
but so far, it has been difficult to form
large-diameter boules of this material,
limiting the wafer diameter to sizes
significantly smaller than silicon wafers
thus making mass production of GaAs
devices significantly more expensive
than silicon.
Other less common materials are also in
use or under investigation.
Silicon carbide (SiC) has found some
application as the raw material for blue
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and is
being investigated for use in
semiconductor devices that could
withstand very high operating
temperatures and environments with the
presence of significant levels of ionizing
radiation. IMPATT diodes have also
been fabricated from SiC.
Various indium compounds (indium
arsenide, indium antimonide, and indium
phosphide) are also being used in LEDs
and solid state laser diodes. Selenium
sulfide is being studied in the
manufacture of photovoltaic solar cells.
List of common • Bipolar transistor
• Darlington transistor
semiconductor • Field effect transistor
devices • GTO (Gate Turn-Off)
• IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar
Transistor)
Two-terminal devices:
• SCR (Silicon Controlled
Rectifier)
• Avalanche diode (avalanche
• SGCT (Switched Gate
breakdown diode)
Commuted Thyristor)
• DIAC
• Thyristor
• Diode (rectifier diode)
• TRIAC
• Gunn diode
• Unijunction transistor
• IMPATT diode
• Laser diode
Four-terminal devices:
• Light-emitting diode (LED)
• Photocell
• Hall effect sensor (magnetic field
• PIN diode
sensor)
• Schottky diode
• Solar cell
Multi-terminal devices:
• Tunnel diode
• VCSEL
• Charge-coupled device (CCD)
• VECSEL
• Microprocessor
• Zener diode
• Random Access Memory (RAM)
• Read-only memory (ROM)
Three-terminal devices:

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 Transistor
Introduction
A transistor is a semiconductor device
commonly used to amplify or switch
electronic signals. A transistor is made
of a solid piece of a semiconductor
material, with at least three terminals for
connection to an external circuit. A
voltage or current applied to one pair of
the transistor's terminals changes the
current flowing through another pair of
terminals. Because the controlled
(output) power can be much more than
the controlling (input) power, the
transistor provides amplification of a
signal. Some transistors are packaged
individually but most are found in
integrated circuits.
The transistor is the fundamental
building block of modern electronic
devices, and its presence is ubiquitous in
modern electronic systems.
Importance
The transistor is considered by many to
be one of the greatest inventions of the
twentieth century. The transistor is the
key active component in practically all
modern electronics. Its importance in
today's society rests on its ability to be
mass produced using a highly automated
process (fabrication) that achieves
astonishingly low per-transistor costs.
Although several companies each
produce over a billion individually-
packaged (known as discrete) transistors
every year, the vast majority of
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transistors produced are in integrated
circuits (often shortened to IC,
microchips or simply chips) along with
diodes, resistors, capacitors and other
electronic components to produce
complete electronic circuits. A logic gate
consists of up to about twenty transistors
whereas an advanced microprocessor, as
of 2006, can use as many as 1.7 billion
transistors (MOSFETs)."About 60
million transistors were built this year
[2002] ... for [each] man, woman, and
child on Earth."
The transistor's low cost, flexibility, and
reliability have made it a ubiquitous
device. Transistorized mechatronic
circuits have replaced electromechanical
devices in controlling appliances and
machinery. It is often easier and cheaper
to use a standard microcontroller and
write a computer program to carry out a
control function than to design an
equivalent mechanical control function.
Usage
The bipolar junction transistor, or BJT,
was the most commonly used transistor
in the 1960s and 70s. Even after
MOSFETs became widely available, the
BJT remained the transistor of choice for
many analog circuits such as simple
amplifiers because of their greater
linearity and ease of manufacture.
Desirable properties of MOSFETs, such
as their utility in low-power devices,
usually in the CMOS configuration,
allowed them to capture nearly all
market share for digital circuits; more
recently MOSFETs have captured most
analog and power applications as well,
including modern clocked analog
circuits, voltage regulators, amplifiers,
power transmitters, motor drivers, etc.
The essential usefulness of a transistor
comes from its ability to use a small
signal applied between one pair of its
terminals to control a much larger signal
at another pair of terminals. This
property is called gain. A transistor can
control its output in proportion to the
input signal, that is, can act as an
amplifier. Or, the transistor can be used
to turn current on or off in a circuit as an
electrically controlled switch, where the
amount of current is determined by other
circuit elements.
The two types of transistors have slight
differences in how they are used in a
circuit. A bipolar transistor has terminals
labeled base, collector, and emitter. A
small current at the base terminal (that
is, flowing from the base to the emitter)
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can control or switch a much larger
current between the collector and emitter
terminals. For a field-effect transistor,
the terminals are labeled gate, source,
and drain, and a voltage at the gate can
control a current between source and
drain.
The image to the right represents a
typical bipolar transistor in a circuit.
Charge will flow between emitter and
collector terminals depending on the
current in the base. Since internally the
base and emitter connections behave like
a semiconductor diode, a voltage drop
develops between base and emitter while
the base current exists. The size of this
voltage depends on the material the
transistor is made from, and is referred
to as VBE.
Transistor as a switch

BJT used as an electronic switch, in
grounded-emitter configuration.
Transistors are commonly used as
electronic switches, for both high power
applications including switched-mode
power supplies and low power
applications such as logic gates.
In a grounded-emitter transistor circuit,
such as the light-switch circuit shown, as
the base voltage rises the base and
collector current rise exponentially, and
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the collector voltage drops because of
the collector load resistor. The relevant
equations:
VRC = ICE × RC, the voltage across
the load (the lamp with resistance
RC )
VRC + VCE = VCC, the supply
voltage shown as 6V
If VCE could fall to 0 (perfect closed
switch) then IC could go no higher than
VCC / RC, even with higher base voltage
and current. The transistor is then said to
be saturated. Hence, values of input
voltage can be chosen such that the
output is either completely off, or
completely on. The transistor is acting as
a switch, and this type of operation is
common in digital circuits where only
"on" and "off" values are relevant.
Transistor as an amplifier
Fig. Amplifier circuit, standard
common-emitter configuration.
The common-emitter amplifier is
designed so that a small change in
voltage in (Vin) changes the small current
through the base of the transistor and the
transistor's current amplification
combined with the properties of the
circuit mean that small swings in Vin
produce large changes in Vout.
It is important that the operating values
of the transistor are chosen and the
circuit designed such that as far as
possible the transistor operates within a
linear portion of the graph, such as that
shown between A and B, otherwise the
output signal will suffer distortion.
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Various configurations of single
transistor amplifier are possible, with
some providing current gain, some
voltage gain, and some both.
From mobile phones to televisions, vast
numbers of products include amplifiers
for sound reproduction, radio
transmission, and signal processing. The
first discrete transistor audio amplifiers
barely supplied a few hundred mill
watts, but power and audio fidelity
gradually increased as better transistors
became available and amplifier
architecture evolved.
Modern transistor audio amplifiers of up
to a few hundred watts are common and
relatively inexpensive.
Some musical instrument amplifier
manufacturers mix transistors and
vacuum tubes in the same circuit, as
some believe tubes have a distinctive
sound.
.
Comparison with a Vaccum tubes
Advantages
The key advantages that have allowed
transistors to replace their vacuum tube
predecessors in most applications are
• Small size and minimal weight,
allowing the development of
miniaturized electronic devices.
• Highly automated manufacturing
processes, resulting in low per-
unit cost.
• Lower possible operating
voltages, making transistors
suitable for small, battery-
powered applications.
• No warm-up period for cathode
heaters required after power
application.
• Lower power dissipation and
generally greater energy
efficiency.
• Higher reliability and greater
physical ruggedness.
• Extremely long life. Some
transistorized devices have been
in service for more than 30 years.
• Complementary devices
available, facilitating the design
of complementary-symmetry
circuits, something not possible
with vacuum tubes.
*******
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• Insensitivity to mechanical shock
and vibration, thus avoiding the
problem of micro phonics in
audio applications.
Limitations
• Silicon transistors do not operate
at voltages higher than about
1,000 volts (SiC devices can be
operated as high as 3,000 volts).
In contrast, electron tubes have
been developed that can be
operated at tens of thousands of
volts.
• High power, high frequency
operation, such as used in over-
the-air television broadcasting, is
better achieved in electron tubes
due to improved electron
mobility in a vacuum.
• On average, a higher degree of
amplification linearity can be
achieved in electron tubes as
compared to equivalent solid
state devices, a characteristic that
may be important in high fidelity
audio reproduction.
Silicon transistors are much more
sensitive than electron tubes to an
electromagnetic pulse, such as generated
by an atmospheric nuclear explosion
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