Testing a MOSFET with a multimeter feels like testing a capacitor, and that feeling is the clue. A good MOSFET holds a charge on its gate like a capacitor, the body diode can restore that charge, and a shorted part reads like a diode in both directions — the fingerprint of the failed device. This … Read more
A body control module (BCM) is a list of loads with a power budget attached: lights, locks, wipers, and relays, each with a peak and an idle current, all sharing one rail. The diode plan follows that budget. This article reads the BCM the way its designer does — budget first — walks the peak, … Read more
Cranking is the two-second blackout of the 12 V rail. The starter motor pulls hundreds of amps, the battery voltage collapses toward 6-8 V, and every module on the rail — the ECU, the lighting, the pump — lives through the dip. The diodes and TVS do not stop the collapse; they survive it, hold … Read more
A hot rectifier summons the same reflex every time: swap the diode for a “bigger” one and hope. That reflex works when the diode is genuinely undersized and silently wastes money when it is not, because four of the six causes of rectifier overheating have nothing to do with the diode’s current rating. The faster … Read more
The AC loop and the DC loop of a rectifier stage are two antennas, and their size is entirely under the designer’s control. A layout that keeps the loops small stays quiet; one that lets them grow radiates switching noise the components never intended. This article frames the loop-as-antenna idea, shows the trace, via, and … Read more
The 1N4728A is a 3.3 V Zener diode that a buyer and a repair bench read in two completely different ways. The buyer sees a part number, a voltage rating, and a price; the bench sees a curve to measure, a breakdown knee to find, and a part to verify before trusting it. Both workflows … Read more
An LED driver is not a voltage supply with LEDs attached; it is a constant-current system, and the rectifier sees that system’s unique stress. The rail holds a fixed current, the PWM dimming writes sharp edges into the electrical stream, and the sealed luminaire keeps the heat in. This article explains what the diode actually … Read more
An ATX power supply is the most common power electronics board most people will ever open, and it is also the one most often misdiagnosed. From wall plug to 12 V rail, the board walks through a defined chain — input bridge, PFC, rectification, down-conversion — and each step has a diode with a job … Read more
The AWSS family answers most automotive Schottky selection questions with a single table. Four parts — built from 5 A or 10 A current classes and 60 V or 100 V voltage classes — cover the lighting, ECU, and body-control loads that dominate automotive modules, and the family matrix maps each part to the load … Read more
The stored charge in a diode junction is a time bomb that releases every time the diode turns off. In an SMPS switching at high frequency, that release happens thousands of times per second, and each release sends a current overshoot back into the inductor — a spike that heats, stresses neighbors, and radiates EMI … Read more