Diodes

Thread Starter

krgoutham

Joined Dec 8, 2004
22
Hello

Are there any diodes available in the market that are better than the conventional ones. FOr eg, the commercially avaialble diodes have a drop of 0.3 volts. Are there any diodes available that have a much lesser voltage drop.

Thanks
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
What sort of forward voltage drop are you requiring?

It is usually Germanium diodes that have a voltage drop of about 0.3V and I have heard of some having forward voltage drops of down to 0.2V. However, it is primarily material dependant.

Dave
 

BladeSabre

Joined Aug 11, 2005
105
I'm using BAT754 Schottky diodes, which have a forward voltage drop of 0.2V (at very small currents only). I've not come across anything better than that.
 

Ron H

Joined Apr 14, 2005
7,063
BladeSabre said:
I'm using BAT754 Schottky diodes, which have a forward voltage drop of 0.2V (at very small currents only). I've not come across anything better than that.
What are you using them for? There are feedback circuits (and feed-forward circuits) that, in some applications, can reduce the forward drop to essentially zero.
 

BladeSabre

Joined Aug 11, 2005
105
What are you using them for? There are feedback circuits (and feed-forward circuits) that, in some applications, can reduce the forward drop to essentially zero.
Protection circuits for chips where the inputs can't go below -0.3V. I'd be very interested to hear about that though.

So I'm correct in my assumption that for a traditional two-terminal diode that we can only get down to 0.2V forward voltage typically using Germanium, however can get down into the regions of 100's of mV using MOS technology?
"100's of mV" >= 0.2V
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
BladeSabre said:
"100's of mV" >= 0.2V
Ignore my stupidity! I was thinking that the MOS technology had forward voltages in the region of 100's of micro-volts. As it happens I can't read or type.

Dave
 
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