In a simplified ideal situation a semiconductor diode would never function, since it would be composed of several diodes connected back-to-front in series.
32.
It consisted of a printed circuit card, the M792, that plugged into the Unibus and held a 32 by 16 array of semiconductor diodes.
33.
These crude semiconductor diodes were the first semiconductor electronic devices, and although they were widely used, almost nothing was known about how they worked.
34.
Any semiconductor diode has an exponential voltage / current characteristic that gives an effective " knee " voltage sometimes used as a voltage reference.
35.
But LEDs, like all semiconductor diodes, are capable of detecting incoming light, which makes possible construction of a two-way opto-isolator from a pair of LEDs.
36.
Because internally the base and emitter connections behave like a semiconductor diode, a voltage drop develops between base and emitter while the base current exists.
37.
In modern sets, a semiconductor diode is used for the detector, which is much more reliable than a cat's whisker detector and requires no adjustments.
38.
The first practical application of semiconductors in electronics was the 1904 development of the Cat's-whisker detector, a primitive semiconductor diode widely used in early radio receivers.
39.
However, compared to modern semiconductor diodes, vacuum rectifiers have high internal resistance due to space charge and therefore high voltage drops, causing high power dissipation and low efficiency.
40.
Any reverse-biased semiconductor diode displays a measure of voltage-dependent capacitance and can be used to change the frequency of an oscillator by varying a control voltage applied to the diode.
