Why is Schottky diode called "artifact" in switching circuit — SUNMATE

With the constant trend of the development of the electronic industry, the electronic component industry is also growing under the influence of the electronic industry. Schottky diodes are the most common protective devices in the electronic component industry, but sometimes they are also ignored by designers. Its biggest highlight is unidirectional conductivity, which means that current can only pass through a single direction. It is precisely because of this characteristic that it is often used as a switching element to control current.

Generally speaking, the crystal Schottky diode is a p-n junction interface formed by the sintering of p-type semiconductor and n-type semiconductor. A space charge layer is formed on both sides of its interface, forming a self built electric field.

The PN junction has a small electrostatic capacity and is suitable for high-frequency circuits. Because of its simple structure, it is cheap. For general purposes such as detection, rectification, modulation, mixing, and amplitude limiting of small signals, it has a wide range of applications. Compared with the surface junction type, the forward and reverse characteristics of the point contact Schottky diode are poor, so it cannot be used for large current and rectification. In addition, in order to make the switching characteristics of Schottky diodes better, we can make the forward resistance extremely small and the reverse resistance extremely large through the manufacturing process to improve the switching speed.

Schottky diode also has a very important parameter reverse recovery time, which refers to the time required for Schottky diode from conduction to cut-off. The sum of the activation time and reverse recovery time is called the switching time. Since the reverse recovery time is much greater than the activation time, the general parameter manual only provides the reverse recovery time. Schottky diodes are widely used in various automatic control circuits, communication circuits, instrument circuits, household computer circuits, TV sets, video recorders and other circuits because of their high switching speed, long life, contactless, small size and high reliability.

Schottky diode highlights:

Schottky diode is a low power consumption, ultra high speed diode. Its main feature is that the reverse recovery time is extremely short, with a minimum of a few nS, and its forward conduction voltage drop is only about 0.4V. It is widely used in the occasions of high current rectifier diode, freewheeling diode and protective diode. Some switching power supplies require Schottky diodes.