Most of you already know what a diode is, but how much do you really know about the device?
The diode is a component which allows current to pass in only one direction. Originally they were made by placing a positively charged anode plate within view of a tungsten cathode in a high vacuum. By heating the cathode to several hundred degrees, the metal’s work function is reduced enough that electrons with may leave into the vacuum using only a few volts. These electrons would then be attracted to the cold, positive anode and would flow into it and out of the tube. As the cold plate’s work function was several magnitudes higher than the cathode’s, there was a greater probability that current would flow in only one direction.
While this thermionic process works very well and very fast, the heater requirement ends up making the diode quite inefficient. As a result thermionic diodes are only used when frequencies of several hundred megahertz must be rectified at very high powers; they’ve largely been antiquated by the semiconductor diode in most applications.
Semiconductors are neat little elements. When pure, they are very good insulators and will not conduct. It’s possible though, to coax these materials to either conduct electrons or holes, simply by adding some impurities to the crystal lattice. By throwing a few atoms with more than 5 valence electrons into the lattice the semiconductor will be able to conduct electrons, creating an N-Type semiconductor. Likewise, by throwing in a few electron-few atoms it’s possible to conduct holes, creating a P-Type material. By sandwiching these two types together we can form a PN junction; a diode.
With the P-Semiconductor biased positively and the N biased negatively, electrons easily can flow into the diode, jump across the small 0.7V depletion region and leave to continue on their merry way. If the diode is biased incorrectly though, holes and electrons migrate away from the junction and a very big depletion region is formed. In fact, the junction turns into a few-picofarad capacitor, and in some cases may even be used as such.
As great as they may be, PN junctions are lossy little things. Though they do a really good job of blocking reverse current their 0.7 (now, 0.5) volt depletion region will readily burn 14 watts if 20 amps are to be rectified. Not only that, but it takes significant time for the diode to ‘recover’ after a reverse-bias, thereby limiting the speed at which it may rectify. 1N series diodes are usually no good for anything more than 400Hz! UF series diodes are much faster and may operate at 100kHz smoothly, but anything more than 500kHz is a bit much to ask for. I suppose we can’t complain though, since they sure beat the hell out of coherers!
I hope you all liked this article; in the future we’ll take a look at specialty diodes!
Thank you !
The 0.7v/0.5v thing is not a property of age (reading into the use of the phrase “now 0.5” in the article) but a material property. Silicon diodes are typically 0.7v but germanium based ones are typically 0.5v (they both can be different values but generally characterised with these values).
There are also diodes that are formed in the same way as the “cat’s-whisker detector” in old radios, i.e. it’s a metal-silicon interface to create the barrier, rather than being between P and N-type doped material (this is more commonly known as a Schottky diode and has a lower junction voltage compared to silicon n-p junction).
That last bit might be misinterpreted.
Just to clarify…
He is saying that the Schottky is a metal to silicone interface, not a P to N-type interface.
Sorry. The sentence structure bugged me. 🙂
SILICON! SILICON! SILICON!
“Silicone” is what strippers are made out of.
8^/
OMG!
I wrote silicon.
I meant silicone!
Thank you.
>8>
so where would you use diode that big as in the picture? )
Applications:
Bridge Circuits
AC & DC Motor Drives
Battery Supplies
Power Supplies
Large IGBT Circuit Front Ends
picking lottery numbers.
diode voltage drop is still variable (see Shockley diode equation), power devices can have drops from 0.4 to 2V depending on the current.
The forward voltage drop is a function of current and temperature, look up the diode equation for the gory details. This is both annoying and useful.
Why did they use a picture of a huge SCR (not not strictly a diode) and not, say, an 1N4148 or 1N400x ?
That device has one SCR and one diode.
Datasheet:
http://www.pwrx.com/pwrx/docs/ld42_500a_1600v.pdf
I think I could have found a bigger diode…
Nice article, thanks for taking the time.
What!? You had to have a power source for a diode equivalent back in the day!? That’s nuts, thanks for the interesting article!
One of my favorite LED tricks is to connect both pins through a current limiting resistor to two MCU GPIO pins. The LED can then be reverse biased to charge it as a capacitor. Then flip the cathode to input, and count the number of cycles for the pin to transition to logic zero state. The “capacitor” will discharge as a function of photons hitting the junction, thus turning it into a light sensor. When wired this way, the same LED can be used to both produce and measure light!
You *can* do that, but LEDs make atrocious photodiodes. Real men with hair on their chest use PIN photodiodes, transimpedance amplifiers, and capacitor values chosen for ultimate bandwidth.
It’s worth noting that when an LED is used like this it is *not* used the same way that a photodiode is used. The use of a photodiode is going to require an op-amp and a DAC in addition to the sensor itself. This little hack requires nothing more than a timer and the cheapest LED you can find.
but if you use an LED as a detector, you can use the led to show the status of the detection.
http://eds.dyndns.org/~ircjunk/tutorials/elex/ledsensor/ledsensor.html
just cause your using it as a light detector dosn’t mean you cant use it as an LED at teh same time.
Huh. I was more intrigued by the link to coherers. I’m amazed how I still come across interesting components I’ve never heard of.
You should have mentioned mercury arc rectifiers 🙂 way more impressive lol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-arc_valve
http://hackaday.com/2010/05/05/possibly-the-most-beautiful-piece-of-hardware/
maybe im wrong, maybe im very wrong, but either way,
im going to say this:
a small signal diode (1N type), if run at ~1/2 current will have a voltage of about 0.666 …
Here’s some real world silicon well-known diode V-I curves I measured:
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/408/curvasdedodoscomuns.jpg
1N5817 is a Schottky diode; these have lower forward voltage drop and are really fast (and have higher reverse current leakage).
Here’s real-world diode curves of some well-known types I measured (text is not English but the juice is in the pic):
0.6V… 0.7V… what’s the diode’s voltage drop after all?
1N5817 is a Schottky diode; these are super-fast, have lower forward voltage drop (Vfw) and higher reverse current leakage.