II.

I-V Characteristics of Diodes

Lab 2: I-V Characteristics of Diodes

The purpose of this lab is to become familiar with the laboratory equipment and to measure the I-V characteristics of a semiconductor diode and Zener diode.

II.A. Pre-Lab Procedure

Read this lab. Make sure that you bring the following items to the lab: o Nickels, dimes, and quarters to purchase parts. o A breadboard. A pre-cut prototyping wire kit. Hemostats. These can be purchased in the lab. o Your lab notebook. o Glue. The preferred type is Elemers Blue School Gel. o Scissors. o A Pen. Pencils are not allowed. Run the following PSpice simulations: o Create an I-V Characteristic plot of a 1 k resistor. o Create an I-V Characteristic plot of a 1N4004 diode. See section 4.B. of the PSpice manual for an example. The part for the diode is D1N4004. o Obtain the numerical values of the emission coefficient and saturation current used in the PSpice D1N4004 diode model. To see the model parameters, select the D1N4004 diode in the previous simulation. Next, click the right mouse button on the D1N4004 part and then select Edit PSpice Model from the menu.

II.B. Oscilloscope Familiarity

Wire the circuit of Figure II-1. We will use this circuit to become familiar with the oscilloscope and 33250A signal generator functions. We now wish to measure Vs with the oscilloscope. You must use the following equipment: For the oscilloscope, use the gray oscilloscope probes located in the gray bag attached to the top of the oscilloscope. To connect from your signal generator to your circuit, use the BNC to clip-lead connectors that are located in the top draw under the oscilloscope. Waveform Display Connect the 33250A signal generator to your circuit Vx R as shown in Figure II-1. Turn on the power to the 33250A signal generator 1k and then press the UTILITY button. + Select the Output Setup option. Vs Rsens Type the number 1000 and then press the option. 10 Select the DONE option. These steps tell the signal generator that the load is 1000 , and allows the signal generator to show the correct voltage on its display (sometimes). Set the signal generator to output a 4 volt magnitude (8 volts peak to peak) sine wave at 1000 Hz. Figure II-1: Circuit to measure the I-V Check that the signal generator offset is set to zero. characteristic of a resistor. Press the OUTPUT button on the signal generator to enable the output. Measure VS with channel 1 of the oscilloscope. Is your scope probe a 1x or 10x probe. What is the difference?

LAB II

II-1

ECE 250

Press the Auto-Scale button. Congratulations, you now know how to use the oscilloscope! (Not really.) Press the 1 button and set the coupling to DC and check that the probe is set to 10:1. Set the volts per division for channel 1to 1 V/Div using the larger knob for channel 1. Set the horizontal scale to display one or two cycles of the sine wave on the scope. Press the Quick Measure button and then measure the frequency, amplitude, peak-peak, and RMS values of the waveform on channel 1. Measure VS using a multimeter. What is the relationship between the values of VS obtained from the scope and the multimeter? Obtain a print out of the oscilloscope display that shows the frequency, peak-to-peak, and RMS values of the waveform.

II.C. Resistor I-V Characteristic

I-V characteristics tell you how the current through a device varies with the voltage applied across the device. We will first observe the I-V characteristic of a resistor since we are all familiar with a resistor's operation.From Ohm's law we know that the current through a resistor is proportional to its resistance,

I = 1 V . This is an equation of a straight line with a slope of 1/R and a Y-intercept of zero. A graph of this R
equation is shown in Figure II-2. Notice that current is non-zero for both positive and negative values of voltage. We will now display the I-V characteristic of a 1 k resistor on the oscilloscope. Measure Vs with channel 1 and Vx with channel 2. Note that channel 1 is referred to as X, and channel 2 is also referred to as Y. Press the AUTO-SCALE button. Set the horizontal scale to 200 s per division. Press the MORE button then select the Settings option. Set the triggering so that the oscilloscope triggers on channel 1, which is the larger waveform. Press the EDGE button. Press the ACQUIRE button and then select AVERAGING to filter out the noise. Set the amplitude of the signal generator to 20 V or as large as possible. Make sure that there is no DC offset. Obtain a printout displaying Vs and Vx versus time.

( )

Rsens is called a current sensing resistor. Since V Rsens << R, I s R , and the voltage across R is approximately Vs . Thus Rsens does not have much of an effect on the circuit but the voltage across Rsens is a measure of I : V V I = x = x amps Rsens 10
Since Vx is a measure of current we would like an amps per division (A/Div) equivalent so that we can easily interpret the scope display. For this example, we will assume that channel 2 is set to 0.1 Volts per division.

Current

Slope= 1/R

Volts

Figure II-2: The I-V characteristic of a resistor

I=

Vx 0.1V / Div 0.01(V / ) = = = 0.01A / Div = 10mA / Div 10 Rsens Div

Write down this A/div setting on your I-V printout. Record all scope settings that are not display on the printout. Make sure you identify each trace and where it was measured in your circuit. Make sure you record the V/Div setting for the Vs and Vx traces and the equivalent A/Div setting for the current trace.

Next, we would like to see the I-V characteristic of this resistor on the scope screen. Press the MAIN/DELAYED button and then select the XY option. Zero the oscilloscope using the little knobs for each channel. Adjust the volts per division settings to fill screen with the I-V characteristic. Note that channel 2 is the y-axis and channel 1 is the x-axis. Press the CURSORS button and use the cursors to measure two points on the I-V curve. Obtain a printout showing the cursor measurements. From the cursor measurements, calculate the slope of the line and then calculate the resistance of the resistor.

II.D. Semiconductor Diode I-V Characteristic

Wire the circuit of Figure II-3. Measure the diode voltage (Vd )with channel 1, measure Vx with channel 2, and measure Vs with channel 3. Vd Vx D1 R Set the signal generator to a 60 Hz maximum amplitude sine wave. 1k + 1N4004 Print scope displays showing Vs , Vx , and Vd versus time. Vs Rsens Display the I-V characteristic of this diode on the scope screen. 10 Use the cursors to measure the diode turn on voltage. Obtain a printout showing the cursor measurements. On your printout, identify values for the diode turn-on voltage V and the diode saturation current IS . Notice that for a diode current Figure II-3: Circuit to measure the I-V only flows when the diode voltage is positive. When the diode characteristic of a diode. voltage is negative the current is zero.

II.E. Measuring Diode DC Parameters1

The DC relationship between the voltage and current of a semiconductor diode is

qV I D = I S exp D 1 KT
If you remember, KT/q is called the thermal voltage Vt, and at 300 K, Vt=25.8 mV. Thus our diode equation can be rewritten as

V I D = I S exp D Vt

We would like to experimentally determine values for the saturation current Is and the emission coefficient . To do this we need to massage the diode equation a bit. First we note that when the diode is forward biased and current flows through the diode, the exponential term is much greater than 1:

V I D = I S exp D Vt

V 1 I S exp D V t

(Without approximations, engineering would be impossible.) Next, we divide each side of the equation by Is and then take the natural log of each side:

I V ln D = D I V t S
Using properties of logarithms, we can rewrite this equation as:

This portion of the lab is a modified version of a lab created by David Rich from Lafayette College in Easton PA.

ln( I D ) ln( I S ) =
Solving for the ln(ID) we get:

VD Vt

ln( I D ) =
y x

VD + ln( I S ) Vt

This is the equation of a straight line y = mx + b where:

= ln( I D ) = VD 1 m = Vt b = ln( I S )

Thus, if we measure data for ID and VD, and then create a plot of the ln(ID) versus VD, we can obtain experimental values for the saturation current IS and the emission coefficient . Use the circuit below and measure several points for ID and VD:
R1
+

1k Vin D3 D1N4004

Measure several points and create a plot of ln(ID) versus VD. Make sure that you have enough points to generate a detailed plot to which we can fit a straight line. Generate a least-squares fit to this line and calculate values for the saturation current IS and the emission coefficient . Compare your measurements for IS and to those values used by PSpice. An easy way to measure the diode current and voltage is to measure the resistor value and then measure the resistor voltage. The diode current is then the resistor voltage divided by its resistance. Fill in the table below with measured data.

Measured Data for IV Plot Measured Value of R1 VIN (Volts) VR (Volts) VD (Volts) 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10

ID=VR/R (mA)

Diode Parameters Measured PSpice IS

From the measured data, generate two plots. One plot of ID versus VD, and a second plot of ln(ID) versus VD. You can use whatever program you want for generating these plots, but a sample program using Matlab is shown below:
%ECE 250 Lab 1 R=978.6; VR=[ Measured data values here separated by spaces]; VR=[VR, More measured data values here separated by spaces]; VR=[VR, More measured data values here separated by spaces]; VD=[Measured data values here separated by spaces]; VD=[VD, More measured data values here separated by spaces]; ID=VR/R; figure(1); plot(VD,1000*ID);

title('Measured 1N4004 IV Plot'); xlabel('V_D (Volts)'); ylabel('I_D (mA)'); pause LN_ID=log(ID); plot(VD,LN_ID);

Line=polyfit(VD,LN_ID,1); M=Line(1); b=Line(2); Fit_ID=M.*VD + b; figure(2); plot(VD,LN_ID,'r', VD, Fit_ID,'b'); title('Log Plot of IV Curve'); xlabel('V_D (Volts)'); ylabel('ln(I_D)'); pause Is=exp(b); VT=0.0258; Eta=1/(M*VT); fprintf('Saturation current IS=%5.3e.\nEmittion coefficient N = %3.2f.\n',Is, Eta);

II.F. Lab 1 Check Sheet

1. 2. Oscilloscope Familiarity Scope printout of VS with measurements. Resistor I-V Characteristic Scope printout of VS and Vx . Scope printout of I-V characteristic with measurements. Semiconductor Diode I-V Characteristic Scope printout of Vs , Vd , and Vx Scope printout of I-V characteristic with measurements. Measured Diode IV Plot Measured data. Plot of ID versus VD. Plot of ln(ID) versus VD. Calculated and PSpice values of IS and .

3.

4.