Does the timing of this circuit depend on VCC? If not, what does it depend on?
— ADVERTISMENT—
—Advertise Here—
The time from when one of the transistors turns on to when it turns off is determined by the currents flowing into its base and collector. When the current into the base drops below the value needed to sustain the current into the collector, the transistor begins to turn off, and the circuit feedback then insures that this happens quickly.
Looking at Q2, and ignoring the transient associated with discharging C2 for now, the collector current is set by R4. The initial base current is set by R1, but this decays exponentially with a time constant of R1 × C1.
— ADVERTISMENT—
—Advertise Here—
Therefore, the primary determinant of the half-cycle time period (in addition to the R-C time constant) is the current transfer ratio, or hFE of each transistor. When the base current drops to a value of 1/hFE of the collector current, the transistor begins to turn off.
Since both currents scale in the same way with VCC, it has no direct effect on the timing. There is only a secondary effect if the value of hFE changes with the value of the collector current.
| Keep up-to-date with our FREE Weekly Newsletter! | Don't miss out on upcoming issues of Circuit Cellar. Note: We’ve made the Dec 2022 issue of Circuit Cellar available as a free sample issue. In it, you’ll find a rich variety of the kinds of articles and information that exemplify a typical issue of the current magazine. |
| Would you like to write for Circuit Cellar? We are always accepting articles/posts from the technical community. Get in touch with us and let's discuss your ideas. |
