Calculating the voltage out of this particular cap coupled circuit

bjtcapacitivecapacitorcouplingpulse

Before I get to my question, I'll just go over the input and output of the circuit from what I "know". The base of the BJT gets a 20 microsecond pulse that puts the bjt well into saturation and "VOUT" goes into a unity gain buffer to be measured somehow.

Questions: At steady state, both C1 and C2 should have 9V from plate to plate on each of them, correct? Then, while the base of the BJT gets a pulse and is in saturation with VCE(sat) = 0.5v, the voltage on the opposite plate of C1 goes from 0 to -7.5? What does this cause to happen at C2 and how do I calculate the voltage drop across the resistor between them?

I hope that's enough information to give you an understanding of my lack of understanding. Thanks.

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

Best Answer

In the instant after the transistor turns on, you can treat the two capacitors as voltage sources. So, in order to calculate the voltages across the circuit in the instant before the voltages start to change on the capacitors, you can simply start adding up voltages: +0.5 V at the collector of Q1 and -8.5V on the left side of R4. Note that the current through R7 is of no consequence initially; it affects the time constant of the voltage decay across C1, but not the initial conditions.

Now, R4 and R6 form a voltage divider, so you can simplify that part of the circuit by replacing them with their Thévenin equivalent: -7.73V and 909Ω. Now you can calculate the current flowing through that impedance in series with R2, which is 7.73V/(909Ω + 4000Ω) = 1.575 mA. Note that the voltage across C2 exactly cancels V1 at this moment in time.

This gives you the voltage drop across Rth and R2, which is 1.43V and 6.30V, respectively. This should give you -6.30V at the right side of R4 (NODE1), and +2.70V at VOUT.