Book on "oddball" semiconductors?

So, for whatever reason, I seem to be getting things like SCRs and IGBTs and other off-the-beaten-path power devices thrown at me.

Any good books on this stuff? I am (obviously) looking for information that goes beyond Wikipedia-level stuff or even app notes, and goes into the whys and werefors of driving these things, when they're useful, when they're not, etc.

Something aimed at all sizes of devices, not just the honkin' big, would be helpful.

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Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott
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ttdesign.com

something like this?

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-Lasse

Reply to
langwadt

Look for Thyristor

Jamie

Reply to
Jamie

That would be a cool book. Maybe I'll take a crack at it some day, since I deal with so many weird parts.

Step-recovery diodes DSRDs exotic schottky diodes laser and optical PIN diodes mesfets, phemts, hbt's tunnel and back diodes varicaps pA and fA leakage parts really fast opamps chopamps MMICS used in strange ways fast logic: ECL, CML, exotica optically triggered switches semiconductor radiation detectors noise diodes mosfets, abused avalanche transistors photofets unusual light emitters imagers and other CCDs thermal imagers photo-magnetic sensors EUV and xray photodiodes hall devices magnetoresistive gadgets signal and power PIN diodes weird RF ic's GaAs, SiC, InP, GaN, SOS e/o modulators semiconductor strain sensors MEMS silicon oscillators polysilicon and thin-film semiconductors microtips and nanotube things graphene microsecond semiconductor heaters spintronics and magnetic effects resonant logic strange power semiconductors unexpected junctions

What other weird stuff is out there?

John

Reply to
John Larkin

n

Wow, nice list. (I wish I understood 10% of it.)

I've been doing this weird 'coherent population trapping' stuff. Used in the chip scale atomic clocks. At lower frequencies the same effect, but pumping Zeeman levels becomes a magnetometer.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Oh, there is this,

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The original Avtech version seems to be gone.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

"Power Electronics", B. W. Williams, Macmillan (London) might be appropriate - ISBN 0-333-57350-1.

Mitsubishi used to have some very comprehensive general app notes on IGBTs, including some theory. Some GTO stuff, too. Maybe they're still around, somewhere.

Reliance (I think) did a paper on transmission line effects in motor windings, when driven with sub-microsecond rise times by IGBTs.

Westinghouse, or was it Motorola? used to publish an "SCR Manual", a long while ago.

The venerable GE Transistor manual had lots of info on things like SCSs.

Mostly vintage stuff.

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Reply to
Fred Abse

Here's one that I used in the past to learn a lot (stuff that I've forgotted by now) about SCRs, Triacs and SCSs: Powerex; Introduction to Solid State Power Electronics

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out.

Dave M
Reply to
Dave M

And UJT's never made sense either.

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Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

BTs

tion

to

hen

uld

Ooh, cuprous oxide diodes!

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Reply to
Michael

And electrolytic rectifiers!

(There must be a solid-state, or at least a gooey-state, equivalent of an electrolytic rectifier.)

John

Reply to
John Larkin

It's no farther away than your nearest electrolytic capacitor.

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--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott

Nahh, they aren't anything special :)

Supposedly, you can get UJT behavior out of JFETs, but this would depend on the degree to which the channel can be enhanced, which I would suppose requires a long, lightly doped channel. Might be possible in high-Rds(on) or high voltage JFETs (does anyone even make JFETs over 40V anymore?), and if the channel isn't perfectly symmetrical, swapping D and S might be worth a try.

Tim

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Reply to
Tim Williams

Can you get jfet behavior out of a UJT?

I once saw a guy swap the ends of a UJT, and it still oscillated, but it was weird. The ramp was almost linear, not exponential looking like usual.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

How would you know? ...Jim Thompson

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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Nice list. Add a few, though:

quantum dots diacs (avalanche thyristors) sidactors (another kind of avalanche thyristor) channel-plate photomultipliers (kind of a microtube application) memristor ferroelectric RAM

Reply to
whit3rd

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