JFET Amplifiers

Learning to mathematically analyze circuits requires much study and practice. Typically, students practice by working through lots of sample problems and checking their answers against those provided by the textbook or the instructor. While this is good, there is a much better way.

You will learn much more by actually building and analyzing real circuits, letting your test equipment provide the “answers” instead of a book or another person. For successful circuit-building exercises, follow these steps:

1. Carefully measure and record all component values prior to circuit construction, choosing resistor values high enough to make damage to any active components unlikely.
2. Draw the schematic diagram for the circuit to be analyzed.
3. Carefully build this circuit on a breadboard or other convenient medium.
4. Check the accuracy of the circuit’s construction, following each wire to each connection point, and verifying these elements one-by-one on the diagram.
5. Mathematically analyze the circuit, solving for all voltage and current values.
6. Carefully measure all voltages and currents, to verify the accuracy of your analysis.
7. If there are any substantial errors (greater than a few percent), carefully check your circuit’s construction against the diagram, then carefully re-calculate the values and re-measure.

When students are first learning about semiconductor devices, and are most likely to damage them by making improper connections in their circuits, I recommend they experiment with large, high-wattage components (1N4001 rectifying diodes, TO-220 or TO-3 case power transistors, etc.), and using dry-cell battery power sources rather than a benchtop power supply. This decreases the likelihood of component damage.

As usual, avoid very high and very low resistor values, to avoid measurement errors caused by meter “loading” (on the high end) and to avoid transistor burnout (on the low end). I recommend resistors between 1 kΩ and 100 kΩ.

One way you can save time and reduce the possibility of error is to begin with a very simple circuit and incrementally add components to increase its complexity after each analysis, rather than building a whole new circuit for each practice problem. Another time-saving technique is to re-use the same components in a variety of different circuit configurations. This way, you won’t have to measure any component’s value more than once.

This relaxation oscillator circuit uses a resistor-capacitor combination (R₁ - C₁) to establish the time delay between output pulses:

The voltage measured between TP1 and ground looks like this on the oscilloscope display:

A slightly different version of this circuit adds a JFET to the capacitor’s charge current path:

Now, the voltage at TP1 looks like this:

What function does the JFET perform in this circuit, based on your analysis of the new TP1 signal waveform? The straight-line charging voltage pattern shown on the second oscilloscope display indicates what the JFET is doing in this circuit.

Hint: you don’t need to know anything about the function of the unijunction transistor (at the circuit’s output) other than it acts as an on/off switch to periodically discharge the capacitor when the TP1 voltage reaches a certain threshold level.

Challenge question: write a formula predicting the slope of the ramping voltage waveform measured at TP1.

A student builds this transistor amplifier circuit on a solderless “breadboard”:

The purpose of the potentiometer is to provide an adjustable DC bias voltage for the transistor, so it may be operated in Class-A mode. After some adjustment of this potentiometer, the student is able to obtain good amplification from the transistor (signal generators and oscilloscopes have been omitted from the illustration for simplicity).

Later, the student accidently adjusts the power supply voltage to a level beyond the JFET’s rating, destroying the transistor. Re-setting the power supply voltage back where the student began the experiment and replacing the transistor, the student discovers that the biasing potentiometer must be re-adjusted to achieve good Class-A operation.

Intrigued by this discovery, the student decides to replace this transistor with a third (of the same part number, of course), just to see if the biasing potentiometer needs to be adjusted again for good Class-A operation. It does.

Explain why this is so. Why must the gate biasing potentiometer be re-adjusted every time the transistor is replaced, even if the replacement transistor(s) are of the exact same type?