Category: Electronic Components

A Tester For Zener Diodes

Zener diodes are used for several purposes, from providing a reference voltage, to protecting sensitive circuits from being destroyed by the wrong input.

Today, I will show you how these diodes work and how to build a simple circuit to measure their most important characteristic, the reverse breakdown voltage. To know more on this topic, please watch the companion video posted on YouTube.

A zener diode looks like a regular diode and actually behaves as such when directly biased (positive voltage on the anode).

However, when inversely biased (negative voltage on the anode), a zener diode behaves in a completely different way.

Let’s take a look at its characteristic I-V diagram:

zener_characteristic

You can see that in the region of direct (or forward) bias, the zener behaves just like any diode. It also seems like in the inverse bias it behaves like a regular diode.  However, there is a big difference between the two.

For a regular diode, the reverse breakdown voltage is very high, in the order of 100V or more, sometimes much more. Such high that you never think at it when you use regular diodes, and you assume that with inverse bias the diode just does not conduct electric current.

For a zener diode, instead, the reverse breakdown voltage is low, in the order of one or two digit volts. Therefore, it is very easy in an electronic circuit to bring this kind of diode to reach the condition when it will start conducing electric current even if inversely polarized.

We actually exploit this behaviour to create reference voltages, or to provide a protection against unwanted voltages at the input of certain circuits, or a ton of other things.

The behaviour of a diode depends in fact upon the way it was fabricated, and in particular upon how it was doped. Regular diodes are lightly doped, while zener diodes are heavily doped. Depending on the amount of doping on both the P and the N side of the junction, the reverse breakdown voltage changes. That way, manufacturers can create zener diodes within a large range of breakdown voltages.

Problem is, manufacturers often don’t put the value of the breakdown voltage on the body of the components. Instead, they put some internal code or, sometimes, nothing at all.

So, if you had a number of such diodes on your workbench, how to distinguish them from one another?

Meet the zener tester.

It is a device that allows you to measure the reverse breakdown voltage, so you know if the diode works and what that voltage is.

How such a tester works? From the I-V diagram above, you can see that the characteristic of the zener diode is an almost vertical line when polarized in the reverse bias region. For any current value in that vertical line, the voltage is always the same and corresponds to the breakdown voltage. So, if we circulate a current at any point of that vertical line, we can measure at the terminals of that diode its breakdown voltage.

The zener tester I’m showing you today does just that: forces a current into the zener diode so we can measure the value of the breakdown voltage. We choose this current in such a way that it is high enough to stay away from the point where the characteristic is not linear, but low enough to avoid dissipating inside the diode a power that the diode itself cannot handle.

The following link allows you to download an archive containing the schematic of such device, along with the OpenSCAD code to 3D print the box for the device.

zener_diodes_tester_files

In the schematic you’ll see that I used a ready-made boost converter and a digital voltmeter. Here are the links to the store where I bought them. Of course you are free to use any other equivalent component. It will work as well.

BOOST CONVERTER

DIGITAL VOLTMETER

Please make sure to watch the YouTube video that completes the information I provided in this post. Between the two, you should have a complete view of the design of the device and should be able to build it.

Happy experiments!

 

Behind The Scenes Of The Theremin Design

How I design my electronic circuits and prepare the videos to show them to you.

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Did you ever ask yourself where I get the schematics of the Theremin circuits and other gadgets that I present on my YouTube videos? The answer is simple: I do some research on books, on specialized magazines and on the Internet. I see solutions created by other people, if any, and then I think about what would better work for my case. Sometimes it ends up to be a modification of something that somebody else did, maybe for a totally different purpose. Sometimes, I just use the general idea to create something different, new, my own design that is more appropriate for my needs.

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Either way, I usually build a number of prototypes of what I need, then I take some measurements in lab, then I start making further modifications to my original design, until I obtain exactly what I am looking for.

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Also, more often than not, I figure that the circuit I am testing is too sensitive to certain parameters of the circuit itself. Maybe is a capacitor which value needs to be adjusted a little bit, or a connection between two or more components that causes issues because of capacitive or inductive coupling with other components. That is when I try to change my design to reduce such sensitivities, so that the circuit can be assembled by anyone with the exact same results as mine. And this is what is called engineerization, or adjusting the design for mass production.

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And sometimes, to do so, it is not enough to test the single circuit. Instead, I need to connect the circuit with other pieces that have to work together with it, and see if further unwanted interactions happen, so that I can eliminate them or, at least, reduce them so that they become negligible.

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Sometimes this process goes fast, sometimes takes a long time. And that’s why my videos are not published at fixed intervals. Unfortunately, since this is done only as a hobby, I don’t always have enough time to dedicate to my project, so days go by until, finally, I am done. Then I finalize my schematics, I build the last prototype and the final product and, in the process, I also record all these activities so I can end up making a video out of them.

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Then the video editing process starts and, once the video is finally ready, I release it on YouTube for you to watch it.

One day I will be able to do this full time. Who knows, maybe when I retire. Or, maybe, if you all give me a hand, this could become my new full time job (donations, donations, donations). We’ll see.

Thank you for reading this article. And, as usual, happy experiments!