gain - What is the bypass capacitor at the emitter of a common-emitter... https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/317679/what-is-the-b...

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What is the bypass capacitor at the emitter of a common-emitter amplifier for?

Why do we have the by pass capacitor parallel to R(E) in this amplifier circuit? They say it is to bypasses the RE resistor for
AC signals but then why is it required to by pass the R(E)

They say that it is to avoid the negative feedback by the resistor but i do not understand the concept of negative feed back in
this case? What's negative feed back and why to get rid of it?

amplifier gain bypass-capacitor

edited Jul 17 at 6:14 asked Jul 16 at 8:43

EJP Alex
736 1 6 15 176 7

RC | | RL
Without C E bypass capacitor the amplifier gain is equal to RE
So, the gain is low if R E value is large.
The input impedance is also high R 1 | | R 2 | | ( R E). And by adding C E capacitor we "short" R E for the AC
signals and the gain increases to R C | | R L 40 I C. But distortion will also increases. G36 Jul 16 at 11:39

2 You may want to change the headline question: it's a common emitter amplifier, not an emitter
follower. Chu Jul 16 at 12:54

I was just about to point out that it's not a bypass capacitor, but I think I'm wrong because it is
decoupling AC from the emitter resistor. Oskar Skog Jul 17 at 6:31

4 Answers

It is tricky to see where the negative feedback is in a common-emitter amplifier

but, consider what happens when the emitter resistor isn't present i.e. the emitter
is connected directly to 0 volts. The signal input into the base then becomes an
input into a grounded and forward biased diode.

Because the base-emitter region is a diode, when you raise the base voltage (NPN
transistor) you get the input impedance characteristic of a diode: -

1 of 1 8/19/17, 12:11 AM