I need a animation of working of zener diode

zener diode working animation ppt

The Zener Diode
In the previous Signal Diode tutorial, we saw that a “reverse biased” diode blocks current in the reverse direction, but will suffer from premature breakdown or damage if the reverse voltage applied across it is too high.

However, the Zener Diode or “Breakdown Diode” as they are sometimes called, are basically the same as the standard PN junction diode but are specially designed to have a low pre-determined Reverse Breakdown Voltage that takes advantage of this high reverse voltage. The zener diode is the simplest types of voltage regulator and the point at which a zener diode breaks down or conducts is called the “Zener Voltage” ( Vz ).

The Zener diode is like a general-purpose signal diode consisting of a silicon PN junction. When biased in the forward direction it behaves just like a normal signal diode passing the rated current, but as soon as a reverse voltage applied across the Zener Diode exceeds the rated voltage of the device, the diodes breakdown voltage is reached at which point a process called Avalanche Breakdown occurs in the semiconductor depletion layer and a current starts to flow through the diode to limit this increase in voltage.

The current now flowing through the zener diode increases dramatically to the maximum circuit value (which is usually limited by a series resistor) and once achieved this reverse saturation current remains fairly constant over a wide range of applied voltages. The voltage point at which the voltage across the zener diode becomes stable is called the “zener voltage” for zener diodes this voltage can range from less than one volt to hundreds of volts.

The point at which the zener voltage triggers the current to flow through the diode can be very accurately controlled (to less than 1% tolerance) in the doping stage of the diodes semiconductor construction giving the diode a specific zener breakdown voltage, ( Vz ) for example, 4.3V or 7.5V. This zener breakdown voltage on the I-V curve is almost a vertical straight line.