POWER ELECTRONICS

2011

Q: Explain how diode and transistor(bjt) can be used as a switch?

Diode:A device that blocks current in one direction while letting current flow in another direction is called a diode. Diodes can be used in a number of ways. For example, a device that uses batteries often contains a diode that protects the device if you insert the batteries backward. The diode simply blocks any current from leaving the battery if it is reversed -- this protects the sensitive electronics in the device. A semiconductor diode's behavior is not perfect, as shown in this graph:

When reverse-biased, an ideal diode would block all current. A real diode lets perhaps 10 microamps through -- not a lot, but still not perfect. And if you apply enough reverse voltage (V), the junction breaks down and lets current through. Usually, the breakdown voltage is a lot more voltage than the circuit will ever see, so it is irrelevant. When forward-biased, there is a small amount of voltage necessary to get the diode going. In silicon, this voltage is about 0.7 volts. This voltage is needed to start the hole-electron combination process at the junction. Another monumental technology that's related to the diode is the transistor. Transistors and diodes have a lot in common.

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2011

Transistor:A transistor is created by using three layers rather than the two layers used in a diode. You can create either an NPN or a PNP sandwich. A transistor can act as a switch or an amplifier. A transistor looks like two diodes back-to-back. You'd imagine that no current could flow through a transistor because back-to-back diodes would block current both ways. And this is true. However, when you apply a small current to the center layer of the sandwich, a much larger current can flow through the sandwich as a whole. This gives a transistor its switching behavior. A small current can turn a larger current on and off. A silicon chip is a piece of silicon that can hold thousands of transistors. With transistors acting as switches, you can create Boolean gates, and with Boolean gates you can create microprocessor chips. The natural progression from silicon to doped silicon to transistors to chips is what has made microprocessors and other electronic devices so inexpensive and ubiquitous in today's society. The fundamental principles are surprisingly simple. The miracle is the constant refinement of those principles to the point where, today, tens of millions of transistors can be inexpensively formed onto a single chip

Q: explain the working following thyristor? Scr Sus Diac Triac Ans: SCR:-

principle

of

the

A Silicon-Controlled Rectifier (SCR) is a four-layer (p-n-p-n) semiconductor device that doesn't allow current to flow until it is triggered and, once Uzaif Akram (EE-133)
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triggered, will only allow the flow of current in one direction. It has three terminals: 1) an input control terminal referred to as a 'gate'; 2) an output terminal known as the 'anode'; and 3) a terminal known as a 'cathode', which is common to both the gate and the anode.

SCR Construction:

Diac:This is a bi-directional trigger diode used mainly in firing Triacs and Thyristors in AC control circuits. Its circuit symbol (shown in figure 3a) is similar to that of a Triac, but without the gate terminal, in fact it is a simpler device and consists of a PNP structure (like a transistor without a base) and acts basically as two diodes connected cathode to cathode as shown in figure 3b.

The DIAC is designed to have a particular break over voltage, typically about 30 volts, and when a voltage less than this is applied in either polarity, the device remains in a high resistance state with only a small leakage current flowing. Once the break over voltage is reached however, in either polarity, the device exhibits a negative resistance as can be seen from the characteristic curve

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POWER ELECTRONICS

2011

Figure 4. Typical Diac Characteristics.

When the voltage across the diac exceeds about 30 volts (a typical break-over voltage) current flows and an increase in current is accompanied by a drop in the voltage across the Diac. Normally, Ohm's law states that an increase in current through a component causes an increase in voltage across that component; however the opposite effect is happening here, therefore the Diac exhibits negative resistance at break-over. In the simple power control circuit in Figure 2 the Diac is used to trigger a Triac by the "Phase Control" method. The AC mains waveform is phase shifted by the RC circuit so that a reduced amplitude, phase delayed version of the mains waveform appears across C. As this wave reaches the break over voltage of the Diac, it conducts and discharges C into the gate of the Triac, so triggering the Triac into conduction. The Triac then conducts for the remainder of the mains half cycle, and when the mains voltage passes through zero it turns off. Some time into the next (negative) half cycle, the voltage on C reaches break over voltage in the other polarity and the Diac again conducts, providing an appropriate trigger pulse to turn on the Triac. By making R a variable value, the amount of phase delay of the waveform across C can be varied, allowing the time during each half cycle at which the Triac fires to be controlled. In this way, the amount of power delivered to the load can be varied. Note that in practical control circuits using Thyristors, Triacs and Diacs, large voltages are switched very rapidly. This can give rise to serious RF interference, and steps must be taken

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POWER ELECTRONICS

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in circuit design to minimise this. Also as Mains is present in the circuit there must be some form of safe isolation between the low voltage control components (e.g. the Diac and phase shift circuits) and the mains "live" components, e.g. the Triac and load. This can easily be achieved by "Opto-coupling" the low voltage control circuit to the high voltage power control (Triac or SCR) part of the circuit

Triac
Figure 1. Triac Circuit Symbol

The triac is similar in operation to two thyristors connected in reverse parallel but using a common gate connection. This gives the triac the ability to be triggered into conduction while having a voltage of either polarity across it. In fact it acts rather like a "full wave" thyristor. Either positive or negative gate pulses may be used. The circuit symbol for the triac is shown in Figure 1. Triacs are mainly used in power control to give full wave control. This enables the voltage to be controlled between zero and full power. With simple "half wave" thyristor circuits the controlled voltage may only be varied between zero and half power as the thyristor only conducts during one half cycle. The triac provides a wider range of control in AC circuits without the need for additional components, e.g. bridge rectifiers or a second thyristor, needed to achieve full wave control with thyristors. The triggering of the triac is also simpler than that required by thyristors in AC circuits, and can normally be achieved using a simple DIAC circuit. A simplified triac control circuit is shown in Figure 2. The operation will be explained after introducing the Diac. Figure 2. Simplified AC Power Control Circuit using a Triac

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POWER ELECTRONICS

2011

Q: write a note on power transistor? Ans: The transistor, invented by three scientists at the Bell Laboratories in
1947, rapidly replaced the vacuum tube as an electronic signal regulator. A transistor regulates current or voltage flow and acts as a switch or gate for electronic signals. A transistor consists of three layers of a semiconductor material, each capable of carrying a current. A semiconductor is amaterial such as germanium and silicon that conducts way. It's somewhere between a real conductor such as copper and an insulator (like the plastic wrapped around wires). The semiconductor material is given special properties by a chemical process called doping. The doping results in a material that either adds extra electrons to the material (which is then called N-type for the extra negative charge carriers) or creates "holes" in the material's crystal structure (which is then called P-type because it results in more positive charge carriers). The transistor's three-layer structure contains an N-type semiconductor layer sandwiched between P-type layers (a PNP configuration) or a P-type layer between N-type layers (an NPN configuration). A small change in the current or voltage at the inner semiconductor layer (which acts as the control electrode) produces a large, rapid change in the current passing through the entire component. The component can thus act as a switch, opening and closing an electronic gate many times per second. Today's computers use circuitry made with complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. CMOS uses two complementary transistors per gate (one with N-type material; the other with P-type material). When one transistor is maintaining a logic state, it requires almost no power. Transistors are the basic elements in integrated circuits (ICs), which consist of very large numbers of Uzaif Akram (EE-133)

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transistors interconnected with circuitry and baked into a single silicon microchip or "chip."

Q: what is commutation explain? Ans : When inductance is present in the rectifier circuit, the commutation
overlap angle has little to do with the recovery time of the diode. It is simply a function of the phase angle difference between the applied voltage and current. Since the diode does not have the ability to force itself from the conducting state to the non-conducting state, it must wait for the external circuit to reach a current zero. At that time, if the diode is reverse-biased due to the externally applied voltage, it will stop conducting. (This is where the reverse recovery time comes in, for a few microseconds.) Diodes, SCRs, and triacs are 'zero-waiting' devices, while BJTs, GTOs, and IGBTs (among others) are 'zero-forcing' devices, in the sense that they can force current in the circuit to zero, instead of waiting for it to become zero through external means. Back to the commutation overlap angle: If you had an entirely inductive circuit, commutation overlap would be 90 degrees, and the diode would be in forward conduction for approximately 90 degrees after the applied voltage polarity goes negative across the diode. As the L/R ratio decreases, the commutation angle decreases. An important point to note about this commutation process is that it effectively short circuits the AC supply through the rectifier impedance, as one diode continues to conduct while another one starts conducting. This creates distinct notches on the supply voltage.

Q:what is chopper and explain the step? Ans: chopper:Many industrial applications require power from dc voltage sources. Several of these applications, however, perform better in case these are fed from variable dc voltage sources Uzaif Akram (EE-133)
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The conversion of fixed DC voltage to an adjustable DC output voltage, through the use of semiconductor devices is called chopping. A chopper is a static device that converts fixed dc input voltage to a variable dc output voltage directly. It is a high speed on/off semiconductor switch (connects source to the load and disconnects the load from the source at a fast speed). The power semiconductor device used for a chopper circuit can be force commutated thyristor, power BJT, power MOSFET, GTO or IGBT. A chopper may be thought of as dc equivalent of an ac transformer since they behave in an identical manner. Like a transformer, a chopper can be used to step down or step up the fixed dc input voltage. Chopper systems offer smooth control, high efficiency, fast response and regeneration

Q: explain? Buck converter Step up principle boost converter Buck boost converter Cuk converter

Ans: Buck converter:

A buck converter is a step-down DC to DC converter. Its design is similar to the step-up boost converter, and like the boost converter it is a switched-mode power supply that uses two switches (a transistor and a diode), an inductor

and a capacitor

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POWER ELECTRONICS

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The operation of the buck converter is fairly simple, with an inductor and two switches (usually a transistor and a diode) that control the inductor. It alternates between connecting the inductor to source voltage to store energy in the inductor and discharging the inductor into the load

Buckboost converter:
The buckboost converter is a type of DC-to-DC converter that has an output voltage magnitude that is either greater than or less than the input voltage magnitude. It is a switched-mode power supply with a similar circuit topology to the boost converter and the buck converter. The output voltage is adjustable based on the duty cycle of the switching transistor. One possible drawback of this converter is that the switch does not have a terminal at ground; this complicates the driving circuitry. Also, the polarity of the output voltage is opposite the input voltage. Neither drawback is of any consequence if the power supply is isolated from the load circuit (if, for example, the supply is a battery) as the supply and diode polarity can simply be reversed. The switch can be on either the ground side or the supply side.

Cuk converter:
The uk converter (pronounced Chook, sometimes incorrectly spelled Cuk, uk or Ck) is a type of DC-DC converter that has an output voltage magnitude that is either greater than or less than the input voltage magnitude. The non-isolated uk converter can only have opposite polarity between input and output. It uses a capacitor as its main energy-storage component, unlike most other types of converters which use an inductor. It is named after Slobodan uk of the

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California Institute of Technology, who first presented the

2011
design.

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