SCR Power Control Circuit

Because of the bistable characteristics of semiconductor devices, whereby they can be switched on and
off, and the efficiency of gate control to trigger such devices, the SCRs are ideally suited for many
industrial applications. SCRs have got specific advantages over saturable core reactors and gas tubes
owing to their compactness, reliability, low losses, and speedy turn-on and turn-off.

The bistable states (conducting and non-conducting) of the SCR and the property that enables fast
transition from one state to the other are made use of in the control of power in both ac and dc circuits.

SCS: Motor start/stop circuit, an equivalent circuit with two transistors.

When the “on” pushbutton switch is actuated, the voltage applied between the cathode gate and the
cathode, forward-biases the lower transistor’s base-emitter junction, and turning it on. The top transistor
of the SCS is ready to conduct, having been supplied with a current path from its emitter terminal (the
SCS’s anode terminal) through resistor R2 to the positive side of the power supply. As in the case of the
SCR, both transistors turn on and maintain each other in the “on” mode. When the lower transistor turns
on, it conducts the motor’s load current, and the motor starts and runs. The motor may be stopped by
interrupting the power supply, as with an SCR, and this is called natural commutation. However, the SCS
provides us with another means of turning off: forced commutation by shorting the anode terminal to the
cathode.
 Gate Drive Circuit for GTO

Overall switching speed of GTO is faster than thyristor (SCR) but voltage drop of GTO is larger. The
power range of GTO is better than BJT, IGBT or SCR.

The static voltage current characteristics of GTO are similar to SCR except that the latching current of
GTO is larger (about 2 A) as compared to SCR (around 100-500 mA).

In the above circuit we are using a H11C6 opto-coupler to directly drive a small-watt light bulb. The SCR
section of the opto-coupler is rated at 400 volts at 300 milliamps. (mA) Note that being a unidirectional
device, the SCR will provide only half-wave rectification and the bulb will only be about half as bright.
The input can be controlled from 5-volt computer logic.
 Relaxation Oscillator Circuit

The application of the Shockley diode is a relaxation oscillator circuit that is shown above. This circuit
uses a Shockley diode, that is connected across the power supply battery and capacitor. When the voltage
is applied to the circuit using the battery, then the capacitor in the circuit charges through a resistor. When
the applied voltage across the capacitor is greater than the break over voltage of the diode, then it
activates and works as a switch.This causes quickly to discharge the capacitor through the Shockley diode.
And when the current through the Shockley diode is below the holding current of the diode, then the
diode becomes inactivated and again capacitor charges up.

Diac Heat Control Circuit

A typical diac-triac circuit used for smooth control of ac power to a heater is shown in figure. The
capacitor C1 in series with choke L across the triac slows-up the voltage rise across the device during off-
state. The resistor R4 across the diac ensures smooth control at all positions of potentiometer R2. The triac
conduction angle is adjusted by adjusting the potentiometer R2. The longer the triac conducts, the larger
the output will be from the heater. Thus a smooth control of the heat output from the heater is obtained.
 High Power Lamp Switching.

Use of the triac as an ac on/off switch is shown in figure. When the switch S is in position 1, the triac is
cut-off and so the lamp-is’dark. When the switch is put in position 2, a small gate current flowing through
the gate turns the triac on and so the lamp is switched on to give rated output.

When a voltage (Vs) is firstly applied, the unijunction transistor is “OFF” and the capacitor C1 is fully
discharged but begins to charge up exponentially through resistor R3. As the Emitter of the UJT is
connected to the capacitor, when the charging voltage Vc across the capacitor becomes greater than the
diode volt drop value, the p-n junction behaves as a normal diode and becomes forward biased triggering
the UJT into conduction. The unijunction transistor is “ON”. At this point the Emitter to B1 impedance
collapses as the Emitter goes into a low impedance saturated state with the flow of Emitter current
through R1 taking place.

The programmable unijunction transistor remains dormant until the voltage across C1 exceeds the gate
voltage of Q1 by one diode drop (0.6V) or in this circuit about 6.8V in reference to circuit common. At
this point, current starts to flow into the anode of Q1. When the current exceeds the “peak current”
threshold (about 1.25uA), the transistor triggers and shorts all three terminals together until the anode
current drops below the “valley current” (about 100uA in this case), and the transistor resets itself. When
the transistor triggers, it dumps capacitor C1 across the LED. Peak current is limited by the LED internal
resistance.

By varying (programming) the gate voltage, the voltage at which the transistor fires varies—in this case,
it varies the flash rate.