DC to AC

You already know about transistors as switches. Now you need to know the transient behavior of
resistor-capacitor circuits. RC circuits can be used as timers. We will use them to control the
timing of transistor switching.
Capacitors store charge: ! C"Cap. #ere is the charge stored$ "Cap is the voltage drop across
the capacitor plates and C is the capacitance. %he energy stored in the capacitor is C"Cap
&
'&.
%hese euations describe the static properties. (uring the charging and discharging of a
capacitor we have
dt
t dV
C t I
Cap
) *
) * =
Now consider the circuit shown below.
+t time t ! , the open switch is closed and the capacitor begins to charge. %he current through
the resistor is the voltage drop across the resistor divided by the resistance:
%hus
a first-order linear differential euation with the initial condition "*,) ! ,.
%he solution is

=
RC
t
V V t V
Cap
e-p ) *
, ,

./m sure at some point in your education you came across this result. 0or our purposes let us
calculate the voltage at the point +:
R
t V V
t I
Cap
)) * *
) *
,

=
dt
t dV
C
R
t V V
Cap Cap
) * )) * *
,
=

%hus at the point + the voltage starts at ", and decays e-ponentially to 1ero with a time constant
of RC. We can use "+ to switch a pnp transistor: it would start 2off/ since "+ is large but then
switch to 2on/ as "+ got close enough to 1ero.
A free-running multivibrator:
3 Y

= =
RC
t
V t V V t V
Cap A
e-p ) * ) *
, ,
pnp transistor-4 switches on when the base approaches ground. %he 2on/ state of transistor-4 is
used to charge up a resistor-capacitor on the base of transistor-&$ & will turn off and then after
some time turn on5 then transistor-& will do the same to transistor-4. %hen end result is that the
transistors 2take turns/ switching on and off. %he figure below shows an oscilloscope image of
the voltage at points 3 and Y. We did much the same with the 666 timer chip but here the
waveform is not suare.
The top and bottom curves are the voltages at X and Y. The middle curve is the difference.
+s we shall see below this waveform can produce an +C signal.
.n a transformer a variable current through the primary coil creates a variable magnetic field
which in turn induces a variable current to flow in the secondary coil. .f we send the output of
the multivibrator to a transformer we obtain an alternating current in the transformer/s secondary
coil.
Transformer output.
References: