Circuit Design: Know It All

Chapter 5

Transistors Field-Effect

Ian Hickman

An important milestone in the development of modern active semiconductor devices was the field-effect transistor, or FET for short. These did not become generally available until the 1960s, although they were described in detail and analyzed as early as 1952.

Figure 5.1(A) shows the symbols and Figure 5.1(B) and (C) the construction and operation of the first type introduced, the depletion mode junction FET or JFET. In this device, in contrast to the bipolar transistor, conduction is by means of majority carriers which flow through the channel between the source (analogous to an emitter or cathode) and the drain (collector or anode). The gate is a region of silicon of opposite polarity to the source ...