Metal - old style Diodes

Heid the baw - goal!! · 2006-12-17T00:18:30+00:00

Before semiconductors were invented we had Diodes for rectification whichwere metallic of some sort. Does anybody remember? I am interested if it ispossible to make a Diode from two dissimilar metals. Why? Well folklore hasit that in some rare occasions people have heard radio stations via twofillings on top of each other in their teeth.Also, some claim that a house can vibrate to local radio stations due to themetallic structure. Possible or rubbish?Tam-- Posted via a free Usenet account from

Dec 17, 2006 21 Replies

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rneale 19 years ago

When I was a boy in the 40s there were crystal set kits where the rectifier was the contact between a blued steel razor blade and the point of a safety pin. It helped to move the point of the pin over the razor blade to search for the best spot.

Rectifiers don't have to be perfect to give you some demodulation. Any junction with a kink in its transfer function is probably a candidate.

Reg

Heid the baw - goal!! wrote:

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Haude Daniel 19 years ago

Correction: The tunnel junction itself is not nonlinear. In fact a vacuum tunneling junction between two conductors with uniform density of states (DOS) is perfectly ohmic. It's the non-uniform electrode DOS and/or stuff that's going on in the barrier material that make a tunnel junction nonlinear.

--Daniel

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