TABLE OF CONTENTS Robert Pease
Even the simplest active devices harbor the potential for causing baffling troubleshooting problems. Consider the lowly diode. The task of a diode sounds simple: To conduct current when forward biased, and to block current when reverse biased, while allowing negligible leakage. That task sounds easy, but no diode is perfect, and diodes' imperfections are fascinating. Even these two-terminal devices are quite complex!
All diodes start conducting current exponentially at low levels, nanoamperes and up. An ideal diode may have an exponential characteristic with a slope ?V/ ?I of:
where mS = millisiemens = millimhos, and I F = forward current. And indeed transistors do have this slope of 38.6 mS/mA at their emitters, at room temperature. This corresponds to 60 mV per decade of current. But the slopes of the exponential curves of different real (two-terminal) diodes vary considerably. Some, like a 1N645, have a slope as good as 70 or 75 mV per decade. Others like 1N914s have a slope as poor as 113 mV per decade. Others have intermediate values such as 90 mV/decade. When you go shopping for a diode, the data sheets never tell you about this. To tell the truth, I didn't even really recognize this. When I wrote the first version of this, as published in EDN, I assumed that the slopes started out from 60 mV per decade and then got worse shifted over to 120 mV per decade at higher current levels, and I said...
