IET200 ELECTRONIC DEVICES

1. ID AND NAME OF THE STUDENT: 3420987 – Katia Santiago Del Rio

2. TOPIC AND NUMBER OF THE LAB: V-I Characteristics of a Semiconductor

Diode

3. INTRODUCTION
A PN-junction is formed when a p-type semiconductor is fused to an n-type semiconductor
creating a potential barrier voltage across the diode junction. They work as building blocks
of semiconductor devices, such as diodes, transistors, etc.

P-type has trivalent atoms and each of them produces a hole. While the n-type
semiconductor has pentavalent atoms and each of them produces an electron. When a
manufacturer can produce a single silicon crystal with both p-type material on one side
and n-type on the other, the border between both is called the PN junction. A PN crystal is
known as junction diode, which is a contraction of two electrodes.

There are three possible biassing conditions for the PN junction:

Zero Bias - no external voltaje is applied.

Reverse Bias - positive source is connected to n-type, and negative source to p-type.

Forward Bias - negative source is connected to n-type, and positive source to p-type.

After connecting a circuit, if you measure the voltage and the current of the diode for
forward and reverse bias, and plot, you will get a Current-Voltage (I-V) characteristics
graph. This is the most important characteristic because it defines how much current flows
through the diode for a given voltage.

A resistor shows as a linear device because its IV curve is a straight line. However, a
diode shows as a nonlinear device as its IV curve is not a straight line, due to the barrier
potential.

4. GENERAL OBJECTIVE
Identify the functioning of a basic diode in circuit by collecting data at varying voltages to
create a V-I plot to find the X-Y data of the specific diode in use.

5. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
Work and learn new software for circuit design.

Identify different types of diodes.

Understand the difference between diodes and their applications.

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6. MATERIALS AND METHODS

The first step was to draw the circuit given in the lab practice in Tinkercad Classroom. The
power supplies were all set to zero, and one multimeter read amperage and the other one
voltage. And then we proceeded to increase the supplied voltaje by 0.2 until 2V were
reached. Then the voltage was increased by 2V, until 100V were reached. This in order to
identify how the voltage and current through the diode changed with the supplied voltage.
Each reading we got, was recorded on an excel file in a Table, so that we could later plat
the data in a x-y graph to have a better visualization of the changes in the data.

Once all the data was presented in the graph, we had to analyze the compiled information
to explain what type of diode it was.

7. RESULTS
With the following circuit, we collected 3 types of data, which were arranged in a table of
supply voltage, voltage across the diode and current through the diode.

To create the graph, we used the current through the diode as y- axis and voltage across
the diode as x-axis. Showed below:

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The forward bias region is higher than the knee voltage which is located at 0.625V and
33.7mA.

With this data we can conclude that the given circuit gave us an example of silicon diode.
In the graph we can clearly see that the diode has a higher forward turn on voltage. We
can see it because it is more sharply refined. Another characteristic that made me
conclude that we had a silicon diode is the forward voltage drop around 0.7V (0.25V for
germanium diode).

Comparison 1N4001vs1N34A:

1N4001 1N34A

Silicon Germanium

General purpose rectifier Small signal work

Low forward voltage drop Low current leakage

High current capability Low junction capacitance

8. DISCUSSION
In the comparison table of the diodes 1N4001vs1N34A, we can see both types of diodes. I
believe that there is not a better type of diode, but we will have to check which type is
better for the function that is supposed to have, and depending on the characteristics
needed, we will have to choose.

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9. CONCLUSIONS
As a result of this assignment, we can conclude that both Silicon and Germanium are used
to make diodes. But they both differ in some aspects. A Silicon diode is a semiconductor
diode which is having positive and negative charge polarity and allows the current to flow
in only one direction. On the other side, Germanium diode also works similarly to Si diode,
but the difference is Germanium has low forward voltage, which results in it being a low
power loss and an efficient diode. The main difference between a germanium and silicon
diode, is that Silicon diode has threshold voltage of 0.7V, whereas Germanium has 0.25V.
Other differences could be temperature stability (Si diode about 200°C and Ge about 85°),
leakage current of Silicon diode is in nA, whereas the leakage current for germanium is in
mA, etc.

10. RECOMMENDATIONS (optional)

While working with Tinkercad, you must be cautious when placing the different
components and their respective connections, this to avoid any malfunctioning of the
circuit.
Also, in Tinkercad, all the power supplies must be set on 1 A, if not, the voltage will be
given as a negative number.
Checking the connections made with the power supplies.

11. BIBLIOGRAPHY
LM Engineers. (2020). PN Junction Diode. Last Minute Engineers.

https://lastminuteengineers.com/pn-junction-diode/

PANJIT. (2022). 1N4001 Datasheet.

SEMTECH. (2022). 1N34A Datasheet.

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