Which is better to drive DC current
When i got a question why nmos is selected to drive 1-2A dc load instead of bjt single or darlington transistor array, i said it was better for this application but now i see students at universities work with bipolar transistors to much and tries to use it at everywhere. Mosfet's are though to be used at high frequency but they are efficient to use at higher currents also. It is ok to drive Relays with bjt's but when you need to drive DC load and/or pulse drive on power supplies, MOSFETs are best chose. Attached graph is a simulation result that shows how those two components drive 1A dc load. 2SCR512P is used as bjt driven from 5V with 1k resistor. NMOS is RTR025N03 with 66m Ron with 10k gate resistor. On graph upper line shows power drop on the npn and the middle line shows power drop on nmos. You can see the difference and this is the reason why npn package is SOT-89 while nmos is just SOT-23. At bottom of the graph, there are two lines show current pass from npn and nmos. Think that you drive a LED bar, how effects 10% current lose on lighting!