Diodes are NOT one-way valves #advice #arduino #electronics

How to understand Diodes
Often people explain diodes as a one way valve. While this is a good rudimentary explanation, it fails to show the full picture.

The common PN diode is made of a PN junction. Which can be thought of as two materials that have an abundance of electrons and an absence of electrons. When combined, they exhibit the property of “allowing” electrons to flow in one direction and not in the other.

Now here is the misconception. Electrons can flow in either direction just under certain conditions.

Now imagine you had this circuit with a diode and a voltage source in series.

As you increase the voltage, the current won’t increase dramatically until you reach the forward voltage of the diode. After reaching the forward voltage, any greater voltage across the diode will allow dramatically more current. Think of it like the forward voltage being the minimum amount of voltage to allow the diode to be on. Any more voltage would just pass through.

Lastly, it is important to learn the breakdown voltage of a diode. The breakdown voltage is the minimum amount of voltage needed to allow current to flow backwards through the diode. For most diodes this is a bad thing. But for the zener diode, this breakdown voltage allows you to use it as a voltage regulator.

This is because when used in this configuration. Any extra voltage will pass through the diode and be pulled to 0V.

Now this doesn’t even cover half of what you need to know to use diodes in complex analog circuits, but it will give you a good intuition on when diodes aren’t working.

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