Biochemist, mass spectrometry witch, caretaker for the nanoflow liquid chromatographs. Trans woman, lesbian. Recumbent cyclist. Wisconsin, USA


places I can be found:
mspland.com/links.html

NireBryce
@NireBryce

zener diodes are fucked up


multioculate
@multioculate

shout-out to "varicap" diodes, which are also monstrously fucked-up: someone looked at the parasitic junction capacitance of a cheap silicon diode, and then decided that looked like a neat mechanism for electronically tunable filters. Worked well enough that someone started selling intentionally large and capacitative diodes for the purpose. Don't worry, though -- even if you don't have one of these funky components, you can mimic it with an appropriately biased 2N2222!


beige-alert
@beige-alert

If a photodiode works, why not turn up the reverse bias to the point of getting a single-photon Geiger-mode avalanche photodiode? There is no limit to the bullshit you can do to a diode!


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in reply to @NireBryce's post:

Zeners see a lot of use for making a reference voltage! For example, if you have a battery and you want to shut off when it reaches a certain voltage, you can use a resistor (which is 'squishy') and Zener (which is 'stiff') as an absolute reference that doesn't change with the battery like everything else in your device will. You can also use them to ensure input signals never get over a certain voltage, protecting your other components.