shockley diode

Meanwhile, the work on Shockley diodes took too much effort and the produced devices were a commercial failure.

The mathematical description of the current is provided by the Shockley diode equation.

The Shockley diode model can be used to predict the approximate value of .

The four-layer diode is now called the Shockley diode.

This equation implies (using the Shockley diode law):

By the Shockley diode equation, the current diverted through the diode is:

A diode's I-V curve is nonlinear (it is well described by the Shockley diode law).

The Shockley diode equation models the forward-bias operational characteristics of a p-n junction outside the avalanche (reverse-biased conducting) region.

Small signal Shockley diodes are no longer manufactured, but the unidirectional thyristor breakover diode, also known as the dynistor, is a functionally equivalent power device.

The DC current-voltage behavior of the ideal p-n diode is governed by the Shockley diode equation:

The Shockley diode equation relates the diode current of a p-n junction diode to the diode voltage .

The latter approximation assumes that the bias current is large enough so that the factor of 1 in the parentheses of the Shockley diode equation can be ignored.

William Shockley simplified its design to a two-terminal "four-layer diode" (Shockley diode) and attempted its industrial production.

Current is approximately an exponential function of voltage according to the Shockley diode equation, so a small voltage change may result in a large change in current.

The Shockley diode (named after physicist William Shockley) is a four layer semiconductor diode which was one of the first semiconductor devices invented.

Shockley hoped that the new device will replace the polarized relay in telephone exchange; however, the reliability of Shockley diodes was unacceptably low, and his company went into decline.

Meanwhile, his demands to create a new and technically difficult device (originally called a Shockley diode and now modified to become the thyristor), meant that the project was moving very slowly.

According to Noyce and Moore, as well as David Brock and Joel Shurkin, the shift from bipolar transistors to Shockley diodes was unexpected.

After resettlement, he focused on fine-tuning Shockley diodes for mass production, and five employees led by Noyce continued the work on a field effect transistor for Beckman Instruments.

Shockley intended to replace the current transistor with a new three-element design (today known as the Shockley diode), but the design was considerably more difficult to build than the "simple" transistor.

Shockley initially planned to work on the mass production of diffusion bipolar transistors, but then set up a "secret project" on Shockley diodes, and in 1957 stopped all works on bipolar transistors.

Also, as the base-emitter voltage (V) is increased the base-emitter current and hence the collector-emitter current (I) increase exponentially according to the Shockley diode model and the Ebers-Moll model.

In the winter of 1954-1955, William Shockley, an inventor of the transistor and a visiting professor at Stanford University, decided to establish his own mass production of advanced transistors and Shockley diodes.

This was combined with Shockley's vacillating management of the projects; some times he felt that getting the basic transistors into immediate production was paramount, and would de-emphasize the Shockley diode project in order to make the "perfect" production system.

Under reverse bias voltages (see Figure 5) the exponential in the diode equation is negligible, and the current is a constant (negative) reverse current value of I. The reverse breakdown region is not modeled by the Shockley diode equation.