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THYRISTORS
A Thyristors is one of the most important types of
power semiconductor devices.They are used
extensively in power electronics circuits. The word
thyristor’ is originated from Greek word. The word “thy”
means switch. The total word thyristor indicates that the
switch belongs to a transistor family. The
Development of thyristor has revolutionized the use of
semiconductors for power control. The thyristor was first
invented by Bell Laboratory in U.S.A. in the year 1948
and it (100V,10A) was first introduced in the market by
General Electric Company in the year 1957. However,
commercially it started becoming available after 1960.
Since this time there has been a rapid growth in the
control equipment making use of thyristors.
Initially however for a period of 5-6 years the failure
rate of the equipments hampered the growth of
thyristorised equipment in industry. This however did
not cause any break in the building up of know-how and
technical literature has been piling up since, at a rate of
about 200 reported articles per year on various aspects
of this technology.It will not be wrong to say that the
present state of thyristor technology has been a result
of about ten years efforts in all directions including
development in semiconductor and printed circuits
technology. Today single thyristor is Capable of
handling maximum of 25MW [5000V, 5000A].
TERMINAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THYRISTORS
The thyristor has four layers PNPN semiconductor
switching device. It has three terminals: Anode,
Cathode and gate
When the anode voltage is made positive with respect
to the cathode. The junction ‘J1’ and ‘J3’ are forward
biased while junction ‘J2’is reverse biased. A very
small leakage current will flow through the device. The
thyristor is then said to be in the forward blocking
state or off state condition. If the voltage at anode is
continuously increased, the breakdown of reverse
bias junction ‘J2’ occurs due to high voltage gradient
and the device is switched on. The voltage drop would
be due to ohmic drop in the four layers and it is small,
typically 1v. In the on-state, the anode current is
limited by an external impedance or a resistance,
,As shown in fig.1(a). The anode current must be more
than ‘Latching Current’for on-state condition.If the anode
current does not fall below the ‘Holding Current’the
thyristor remains on.The latching current is usually double
the holding current but both are low, even much less
than 1 of the full load rated value. ‘Latching Current’is
the minimum anode current required to maintain the
thyristor in the on-state immediately after a thyristor has
been turned on and gate signal has been removed