Electronic – matched pair vs dual BJTs

analogbjt

Is there any practical difference between a matched pair of transistors and dual transistors in one package? Realistically, the latter are also two transistors from the same die, so they should be quite identical.

For example, the Diodes Inc. DMMT3906W is advertised as a matched PNP pair, while the Nexperia PMBT3906YS is "only" a dual PNP. Regarding the other parameters they are very similar components.

So is there a real difference or is it that Diodes just does more meticulous tests and is therefore more confident in their specs?

For context, in my application i am looking for a close tracking of base-emitter voltage over temperature.

Best Answer

several issues here:

the thermal timeconstant depends upon the distance between the emitters of the two transistors

The smallest distance for bipolars casually thrown onto silicon, perhaps in a 5-transistor array like CA3046, is 20 to 50 microns. Harris Semi produced(s) a high-speed variant, which of course will have a new layout.

Given the thermal timeconstant of 1 cubic meter of silicon is 11,400 seconds, and the thermal timeconstant of 10 microns is (1 meter/10micron)^2 faster or 10^10 faster, or 1.14 microseconds, you should not expect ultra-high-speed pulse processing to benefit from thermally-tracking bipolars.

Perhaps ComLinear opamps (long ago acquired by some other semi company) realized this, and laid out their input diffpair devices in very tight physical patterns, so the 2 emitters were very close.

And now the second thought: you can cascode the devices, to reduce the Vce and thus reduce the self-heating. You might also adjust each Vce slightly as Ic varies, and thus keep the Ic * Vce constant in each of the two diffpair devices.

For this last --- keeping the Ic * Vce constant --- go review the translinear principle of Barry Gilbert.

[had an error: should have been cascode; I first wrote cascade]

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