Diodes – A Practical Guide

From Avalanche to Zener, we have diodes for you today! Learn how diodes work and how to use them in your circuits. Laser Diodes included!

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Diodes have been around for a very long time. They were the first tube devices and the first semiconductors, and today, there are many different types of diodes for many applications.

We’ll look at several types of diodes today. We’ll see how they are used and perform a few experiments with them. Not only that, but we will also take out a few Laser diodes and play around with them.

Here is a list of the diodes we will be learning about:

Rectifier diodes
Switching Diodes
SCRs (Silicon Controller Rectifiers)
TRIACs
DIACs and SIDACs
Zener Diodes
Avalanche Diodes
Tunnel Diodes (Esaki Diodes)
Varactor Diodes (Varicap Diodes)
Schottky Diodes
PIN Diodes
Shockley Diodes
Photodiodes
LASCRs
Opto-TRIACs
LEDs
Laser Diodes

That’s a lot of diodes, and each one is unique!

Here is the Table of Contents for today’s video:

00:00 – Introduction
01:30 – Understanding Diodes
07:31 – Bridge Rectifier
08:50 – Bridge Rectifier Filter Experiment
11:58 – SCRs – TRIACs – DIACs
14:57 – SCR Latching Experiment
17:27 – Zener Diodes
19:05 – Zener “Voltmeter” Experiment
23:53 – Exotic Diodes
28:35 – Producing & Detecting Light with Diodes
33:27 – LASER Diode Experiments
38:11 – Conclusion

Hope you enjoy the video!

Bill