Conduction current in a bipolar transistor

[Heiko van der Linden]

Hi All,

This may sound like a stupid question but I would really like to know the answer.

I was talking with a friend about bipolar transistors and how they work. This went ok for a while but
after some talking we got into a problem: what kind of current flows through the collector during normal
operation ?
I understand that the majority carriers come from the emitter into the base. And then they feel the electric
field coming from the collector and are swept over the reverse biased base collector junction.
This sounds all very intuitive (the charge carriers are attracted by the oppositely charged collector)
but the base collector junction is reverse biased. So the current that flows is not a "normal" current.
What I would like to know is: what's the conduction mechanism of this current ? Is it an avalanche type 
of conduction or something else ? And what's this type of conduction called ?
I couldn't find a website that explained this aspect of transistors. Some of them say it's a transistor
current etc. So that's not much use either when you want to understand what is really happening in
those little black and silver cans....

Thanks,
Heiko
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/attachments/20001019/cc83fa7a/attachment.htm>