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    Kirk Effect

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    Mohaned Elemam Elshawy
    The Kirk effect causes the current gain of a BJT to drop at high collector currents. It is caused by the buildup of mobile carriers from the increased current flow from emitter to collector. This modifies the depletion region at the reverse-biased base-collector junction. Specifically, the mobile carriers add to the fixed donor charges on the base side but subtract from the fixed acceptor charges on the collector side. As a result, the neutral base width increases, effectively moving the base-collector junction deeper into the collector and widening the base. This leads to a drop in current gain and an increase in base transit time.

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    Kirk Effect

    Uploaded by

    Mohaned Elemam Elshawy
    3K views3 pages
    The Kirk effect causes the current gain of a BJT to drop at high collector currents. It is caused by the buildup of mobile carriers from the increased current flow from emitter to collector. This modifies the depletion region at the reverse-biased base-collector junction. Specifically, the mobile carriers add to the fixed donor charges on the base side but subtract from the fixed acceptor charges on the collector side. As a result, the neutral base width increases, effectively moving the base-collector junction deeper into the collector and widening the base. This leads to a drop in current gain and an increase in base transit time.

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    The Kirk effect causes the current gain of a BJT to drop at high collector currents. It is caused by the buildup of mobile carriers from the increased current flow from emitter to collector. This modifies the depletion region at the reverse-biased base-collector junction. Specifically, the mobile carriers add to the fixed donor charges on the base side but subtract from the fixed acceptor charges on the collector side. As a result, the neutral base width increases, effectively moving the base-collector junction deeper into the collector and widening the base. This leads to a drop in current gain and an increase in base transit time.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    3K views3 pages

    Kirk Effect

    Uploaded by

    Mohaned Elemam Elshawy
    The Kirk effect causes the current gain of a BJT to drop at high collector currents. It is caused by the buildup of mobile carriers from the increased current flow from emitter to collector. This modifies the depletion region at the reverse-biased base-collector junction. Specifically, the mobile carriers add to the fixed donor charges on the base side but subtract from the fixed acceptor charges on the collector side. As a result, the neutral base width increases, effectively moving the base-collector junction deeper into the collector and widening the base. This leads to a drop in current gain and an increase in base transit time.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    The key takeaways are that the Kirk effect causes a drop in current gain and an increase in base transit time at high collector currents due to an effective widening of the neutral base region in a BJT. This is caused by the buildup of mobile carriers from the increased current flow, which modifies the space charge distribution at the reverse-biased base-collector junction.

    The Kirk effect leads to a drop in current gain and an increase in base transit time because the effective widening of the neutral base region moves the base-collector junction deeper into the collector region.

    The buildup of mobile carriers due to increased current flow from the emitter to the collector causes the effective widening of the neutral base region known as the Kirk effect. This is because the mobile carriers modify the space charge distribution at the reverse-biased base-collector junction.

    Kirk effect

    The current gain drops at high collector currents due to yet another mechanism known as the
    Kirk effect. This involves an effective widening of the neutral base due to modification of the
    depletion space charge distribution at the reverse-biased base-collector junction. This is caused
    by the buildup of mobile carriers due to increased current flow from the emitter to the collector.
    This is illustrated in Fig. 7-23 for a p-n-p BJT. Notice that the polarity of these mobile charges
    adds to the fixed donor charges on the base side of the base-collector depletion region, but
    subtracts from the fixed acceptor charges on the collector side of the junction (Fig. 7-23c).
    Therefore, fewer uncompensated donors (and thus a smaller depletion width) are needed to
    maintain the reverse voltage VCB across this junction. As a result, the neutral base width
    increases from Wb in Fig. 7-23b to (Wb)\ in Fig. 7-23c. Also, the depletion region extends more
    into the collector side. This is tantamount to moving the base-collector junction deeper into the
    collector. This leads to an effective widening of the neutral base region (the Kirk effect) and to a
    drop of the current gain and an increase of the base transit time.
    The electric field profile in the collector depletion region in the presence of uncompensated
    dopant charges and mobile carriers (due to the current flow) is given by Poisson's equation.

    where the mobile carrier charge concentration is given by the last term, and vd is the drift velocity of the
    carriers.
    The voltage across the reverse-biased collector-base junction, VCB, is
    related to the electric field profile by:

    Assuming that VCB is fixed, and Ic increases, the last term in Eq. (7-69) becomes more important with
    respect to the ionized dopant charges. In Poisson's equation [Eq. (7-69)], the extra holes injected into the
    depletion region
    have the same effect as if the doping level on the base side were increased and that on the collector side
    decreased. Since the integral of this field with respect to distance is fixed at VCB [Eq. (7-70)], this implies
    that the depletion region on the base side collapses. Although we have chosen to illustrate the Kirk effect
    for a p-n-p BJT, similar results are obtained for the n-p-n transistor. Obviously, the treatment is identical
    except for the polarity of the various charges. From a more detailed analysis, for n-p-n devices with an
    n4" sub-collector, it can be shown that the base widening can extend at even higher current levels all the
    way through the lightly doped collector region to the heavily doped buried sub-collector.
    (a) Cross section of p-n-p BJT;

    (b) space-charge distribution in the


    base-collector reverse-biased junction
    for very low currents;

    (c) space-charge distribution at the


    Base-collector junction for higher current
    levels. We see that the injected /mobile
    holes (shown in color) add to the space
    charge of the immobile donors on the
    base side of the depletion region, but
    subtract from the space charge of the
    immobile acceptors on the collector side.
    This leads to a widening of the neutral
    base width from Wb to Wb.

    Fig. 7-23 (a-b-c) Kirk effect

    Reference :
    Solid State Electronic Devices (sixth edition) - Chapter 7 - P.380.

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