Does anyone have a good way to demonstrate the differences between MOSFETs vs Power MOSFETs? I was thinking I would design a boost converter with a power mosfet then swap out power mosfet for a regular mosfet but I was just using my bench duel channel power supply that only goes up to 30 volts and boosting 7Vdc to 14Vdc, but I swapped the fet out and nothing happened, and the max voltage for the fet was 60 volts and power fet was 100 volts. Now I'm thinking amplify the voltage since my supply is duel channel. Now that I think about it bucking down like 70 volts would be a better demo. I want something violent that will explode the regular fet, any ideas?

 

Well I have a broken grill that you could plug in to the same circuit

 

You are going to have to explain more about what you think the difference between a "MOSFET" and a "power MOSFET" is. Non-power MOSFETs are not at all common except in digital integrated circuits where they are extremely common. There are some small ones, including dual-gate types that are used in RF and other high-frequency circuitry.

Do you have some part numbers for the devices you are thinking of or experimenting with?

I've made a few high power FETs explode. You don't want to do that.

 

Does anyone have a good way to demonstrate the differences between MOSFETs vs Power MOSFETs?

An obvious way would be to use a low power MOSFET in an application that requires a power MOSFET.

 

-Well dl324, like I said I did that and it didn't work, and I dont want to make it too complicated because I'm going to have groups of kid build this thing. On top of that, turns out the application I chose is in fact the most common.

-epb the last time I put a part number on here my post got removed, but the suggested thread under my page has a part number, so I might as well mention the power mostfet i have is an irf530 and the regular mosfet I have is a 2n7000 and I can get it to smoke but one time i was building a circuit for a house appliance and had a violent explosion. I guess I just show them a video instead.

 

At a marina where I worked, the service manager mistakenly replaced a water pump that wasn't bad. He wanted me to kill the one he had removed so it could be used as a warranty part. I wired a 120 volt cord to the 12 volt DC pump and told him to "plug it in". That poor little pump went into convulsions and vibrated and jumped around for 2 minutes before the magic smoke got out and it died.

 

Before you demonstrate the difference, I suggest you define it. I think it’s a marketing term thrown around rather loosely but if there’s really an agreed-upon property that turn a MOSFET into a power MOSFET, I’d be happy to learn that myself.

 

The reason for my original reply was that this idea reminded me of a person that came here few years ago with the idea of explaining to young people why a resistor was needed to regulate the current in a simple LED circuit as in Power supply -resistor- LED. However he had a hard time destroying the LED without resistors (probably using batteries I can't remember that part so vividly but some internal resistance must have been present) .

This experiment and posts about it took some days and I'm not even sure if that person ever succeeded by making that experiment as an example for the students.

However good luck anyways I'm not always a grumpy middle-aged man