Electronic – Normalized DC Current Gain (as oppossed to DC Current gain)

basiccomponentstransistors

I have a table that presents DC Current Gain for BC548B transistor:

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and a graph that presents Normalized DC Current Gain:

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Are those two things related? What does "normalized" mean? Why is the Y-axis labeled with numbers from 0.2 to 2 instead of something around 110 to 450?

My reason for asking this question is that I need to know the DC Current Gain for this transistor at Ic=2.0mA and Vce=5V, and whether it would be significantly different at Ic=2.0mA and Vce=0.5V-1.2V.

The table and the graph come from the datasheet for an On Semiconductor BC54X transistor: http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/BC546-D.PDF

Best Answer

"Normalised" means "relative to some specified reference value".

In this case the Y axis = 1 when Ic = ~~ 7 mA. This means that somewhere else they will have specified the gain AT 7 mA. This graph allows you see see how the gain varies realative to the gain at 7 mA as Ic is varied.

At 0.1 mA and at 100 mA the Y axis value is 0.5 so we know that the gain is 0.5 x the value at 7 mA.

Why they chose 7 mA as their reference point I know not.

They could have just used actual gain BUT normalized \$h_{FE}\$ shows you better how a typical device behaves, regardless of the actual gains, which can vary widely between different devices of the same given transistor type.