Those devices or components which produce energy in the form of Voltage or Current are called as Active Components

how diode produce power

 

Where is the reference from?

 

http://www.electricaltechnology.org/2013/06/the-main-difference-between-active-and.html

 

In my opinion, the definition in that link is incorrect.

I would classify a diode as a passive component.

 

I don't understand.

The quote you pasted into post#1 says the opposite of what is says in your link which is correct, but a roundabout way of stating things.

Post 1

An active device is a device which produces energy.........This is wrong

Link to electricaltechnology.org

An active device requires an external power supply..........Correct

But what is does not say is what an active device does with that external power.

A diode is an active device. For example an LED produces light from the supplied external power.

 

A diode is a passive device, NOT an active device. Even active devices do NOT produce power.

 

Technically, nothing produces power since energy can be neither created nor destroyed. What we call power production really is conversion. Power plants convert chemical or nuclear or kinetic energy into electrical enrgy.

In the context of this thread, tubes, transistors and ICs are active devices since they perform their own kind of energy conversion. Resistors, capacitors, and inductors are the traditional passive devices. Diodes are somewhere in the middle, and LED's came along 100 years after all of this was worked out so I don't know what their official category is. If I have only two choices, then all diodes are active devices. That doesn't smell right, since there is no way a collection of diodes can convert an audio signal into 50 W of audio, but all traditional passives conduct both ways.

ak

 

A diode is a passive device, NOT an active device.

Are you saying a Gunn diode amplifier is not an active device?

 

I would classify any semiconductor device as active. I think that any electrical device that isn't passive is active, and the only passive devices of importance are (basically) linear resistors, capacitors and inductors or variations of those, such as transformers. By that definition even a carbon mic is active.

 

Since there seems to be some confusion about the difference between active and passive here is a modern explanation.

An active device can control (or be used to control) at least one of the circuit variables. These are normally currents and voltages.
That is the active device can determine the value of the circuit variable independently of the rest of the circuit.

A passive device cannot control any circuit variables. All are determined by the rest of the circuit.

So in the case of a diode v a resistor in the diagram the circuit can determine the current, I, through the DUT (device under test) and thus the voltage drop, Vab, across a resistor. That is to say it is not independent of the current.

However the Voltage drop across a diode is constant regardless of the current I through it.

That is what makes any general purpose diode active and any general purpose resistor passive.