Avalanche diodes?

Ah. After a little clarification, it seems that what you're actually looking for is a Transzorb:

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I once worked at a place where they had MOVs all over the place - MOVs have a soft breakdown curve, and they deteriorate a little bit with each transient they suppress. When the company muckety-mucks discovered Transzorbs, they issued ECOs to throw away all the MOVs and replace them with Transzorbs.

It worked.

Good Luck! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise
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I've been using the 1.5k series for some time now. I use lots of 11V bipolar types to protect sensitive 10 Volt inputs/outputs. We also have some option modules that employ LM324 chips which seem to get hit a lot in the applications we use them on. I place a TVS on the input and output of those units and we no longer have issues with those, too.

I recently did home repair for one my friends Electric dog fence that got hit by mother nature, that unit uses 2 48V BP types that saved the day directly connected to the R.F. loop. That just goes to show they can also be used in some basic low Freq R.F. applications.

Mov's are good in conditions where things are not suppose to happen. TVS diodes are great in applications where you suspect something to happen randomly.

Jamie

Reply to
Jamie

Transorb is one trade name for a TVS diode. I use lots of 'em. They even come in SC-70s, five per. ;-) They're especially useful if you can get some impedance in front of them. Also useful after a polyfuse.

Different component for a different purpose. I don't think I'd use a TVS diode on the AC entry. ;-)

Reply to
krw

Nah, these were mostly on inputs of sensors used in a HV ultra-high vacuum environment with various electron guns, ion guns, x-ray sources, and secondary electron analyzers and all kinds of kewl stuff. :-)

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I was an Engineering Tech, my first job out of the USAF in 1977; I arranged to get myself fired after my boss quit and they hired the Fourth Stooge to replace him. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

No, I meant that TVS diodes and MOVs were two perfectly good components, in the appropriate application. I agree, using MOVs where a TVS should be used, as you implied was the case at the PPoE, is dumb. The opposite is also true (TVSs across the mains).

There's a lot of that going around.

Reply to
krw

"hrh1818"

What else is different and makes one device an avalanche diode and the other a controlled avalanche rectifier?

** Forget badly worded definitions - look at the specs.

There is a huge difference in the energy that can be absorbed during reverse conduction.

.... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

If a diode has a tightly specified reverse breakdown voltage, like 5 or 10 per cent, and is intended to be used as such, we call it a zener diode, even though the mechanism may technically be avalanche.

A "controlled avalanche rectifier" has a specified minimum reverse breakdown voltage but usually no max. It's a rectifier that's designed to dissipate some amount of reverse-bias power without being damaged.

The rectifier diode is, well, intended to be used as a rectifier. The zener is not. [1]

John

[1] I screwed up and used an LM1117 to regulate 3.3 volts down to 2.5 for an FPGA Vcc_aux supply. My bad. Turns out that a 7.5 volt MELF zener, use in the forward direction, drops almost exactly 0.8 volts at our operating current, and solders beautifully into the 1117 footprint. So that's what we do now.

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/Diode.jpg

Reply to
John Larkin

On a sunny day (Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:22:56 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

It will only work if the current is sort of constant.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Sure. All regulators need their loads to be sort of constant.

The Vcc_aux doesn't use a lot of current and the voltage limits are pretty wide.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

On a sunny day (Fri, 09 Sep 2011 06:34:56 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

? Not the one I am working on.

Yes OK. But I did consider that solution in the past and rejected it. Why save on a 1$ compnent in a 1000 $ piece of equipment?

Greed .. I discovered some really funny market working todsy, but am under NDA.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Greed? Yes! We're saving 35 cents in a $5000 piece of equipment. Plus, the 1117 needs two resistors to program it and a tantalum output cap for stability. All that junk wastes PCB surface area and costs more to kit and place and inspect.

I really like the MELF backwards zener thing. We do it on purpose now.

Incidentally, as the forward drop of a diode goes up, its tempco goes down. Somewhere around a volt roughly, it's zero. Happens at a lower voltage for schottkies, of course.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Wouldn't it be safer to place a TL431 on the output to insure it does not move above that 2.5V ? I think the little extra drift can be suppressed with the 431 with out any issues.

Jamie

Reply to
Jamie

If I was going to add a bunch of new parts, I could just use a real LDO and a couple of programming resistors.

The FPGA isn't very picky about the Vcc_aux voltage, so the funny zener trick is safe. And it's sure not going to oscillate.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Makes sense. The silicon resistance tempco balances out the diode drop tempco.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

...or a fixed LDO, and forget the programming resistors. ;-)

Always a tradeoff but there is usually plenty of margin in the LPUL (as long as you're not trying to drive 3.3V logic or something equally dumb).

Reply to
krw

On a sunny day (Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:11:01 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

It is interesting, I had to do some soul searching this week, trying to design something for production in larger quantities. The desire to cut on components was sooooo strong. I finally decided to throw in some more chips to make it 100% what a customer would expect (and then buy more), then do the 'close enough' one which would be usable, but not that perfect. So if you look at the diagram you see a lot of things, and may wonder - could that not be done with a micro, and there is a micro on board too. But it could be done with the micro, but not perfectly - clocks etc.. Better would be a FPGA and less glue logic, but that would probably price me out of the market..

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

you

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Two similar posts in a week. It is september

Reply to
LM

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