Articles

A TVS diode protects a rail by clamping an overvoltage, and getting the protection right is a window problem: the standoff voltage must sit high enough that normal operation never trips the device, and the clamping voltage must sit low enough that the protected circuit survives the clamp. Between those two lines, the breakdown voltage … Read more

Selecting a MOSFET for a switching power supply is usually presented as a parts hunt — filter the catalog by voltage, pick a low RDS(on), done. The parts hunt fails in practice because two different loops close at the same time. One loop is thermal: the design’s loss budget closes on RDS(on) and the switching … Read more

A MOSFET datasheet is a compact page of critical parameters, and the ones that decide a design are fewer than they look — but each carries conditions that change its meaning. The on-resistance is quoted at a temperature and current. The threshold voltage is a range, not a point. The safe-operating-area curve is a set … Read more

The surge protector market speaks in joule numbers, and the numbers say less than the marketing implies. A 1000-joule protector and a 5000-joule protector both promise to save your electronics, and neither the joule count alone nor the sticker on the box tells you whether a strike will actually be diverted. The honest reading of … Read more

A single DC rail can carry three different-looking diodes, and the beginner assumption that they all do the same job is the root of most misapplied protection. A Zener, a TVS, and an ESD diode on the same rail answer three different questions: the Zener regulates a slow voltage, the TVS diverts a fast surge … Read more

A TVS is rated in watts and joules, and the first question every protection designer asks is what those numbers actually mean. A “600 W” TVS and a “1500 W” TVS look like a power comparison, but neither number is a steady-state power rating — both describe the device’s ability to absorb a transient pulse … Read more

A power supply built on the wrong material chemistry pays for capability it never uses. Silicon is the cost baseline; silicon carbide buys high-voltage and high-temperature headroom; gallium nitride buys switching speed and compactness. The three are not rivals for the same job — they map onto different stages of the same supply. A charger … Read more

The fastest way to understand a bridge rectifier is to build one from four loose diodes on a breadboard — and the fastest way to smoke a part is to wire the four diodes in the wrong order. The classic four-diode bridge looks simple on a schematic and turns confusing the moment you hold four … Read more

Most students learn the half-wave and full-wave rectifier by memorizing two circuit diagrams and a sentence about efficiency. But on the bench, the difference the two topologies actually make appears on the oscilloscope screen — and the waveform tells you everything the diagram hides. On the same 50 Hz mains, a half-wave output has 50 … Read more

Every diode leaks a little current in reverse, and the number on the datasheet is almost never the number your circuit experiences. A datasheet line reading “10 µA at 25 °C” quietly assumes a specific reverse voltage, a 25 °C junction, and a room-temperature measurement; run that same diode at 125 °C and the leakage … Read more

Every electronics course teaches that “a silicon diode drops about 0.7 V.” Then the first real measurement produces 0.62 V at low current, the lab power supply shows 0.85 V at high current, and the number stops behaving like the constant the textbook promised. The resolution is not that the book was wrong; it is … Read more

Ask a repair technician how to “test a diode” and the answer usually starts with the meter instead of the reading. But the multimeter’s diode mode only produces three meaningful outcomes — a forward drop around 0.5–0.8 V in one direction, OL in the other, or the same reading both ways — and each of … Read more