Excellent ‘free’ book on bipolar transistors (and other excellent free books too)

And there are some gems available for the same price.

And, in my opinion, ‘BJT. Bipolar junction transistor application handbook‘ from Nexperia is one of the gems.

The price is handing over your name, company name and email address, and agreeing to receive marketing information. No money changes hands.

In my case, I could download it immediately after selling my e-soul.

It has around 250 pages and goes all the way from what-is-a-Fermi-level to some nice application circuits – a saw-tooth generator, for example – going through die cross sections, packaging and simulation en-route.

Not a circuit-fest, but more parts of a first-year university course, plus a glimpse into transistor die design, and a look into thermals, with some handy bipolar-based circuit building blocks thrown in.

Obviously, it is Nexperia-centric, and it does ignore some nice bipolar transistor technology from other manufacturers.

Five stars.

UPDATE:

Nexperia got in touch and pointed to this web page, from which five other guides can be downloaded:

• Diode application handbook: fundamentals, characteristics, application
• ESD application handbook: protection concepts, testing and simulation
• ESD protection application handbook: automotive edition
• Mosfet and GaN fet application handbook: power design engineers guide
• Logic application handbook: product features and application insights

They are all, again, excellent.

The mosfet/GaN book differs slighly in that it is a collection of application notes – and no worse for that.
As Nexperia’s GaN transistors are cascode designs, which have silicon mosfet gates, you are not going to find anything on the intricacies of driving GaN hemt gates directly.

The EMC books together contain detailed descriptions if interfaces including USB-C (USB 3.0), HDMI, CAN FD and MIPI, with, for example, methods of confirming eye-diagrams.

Hats off to Nexperia.