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Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
Lets start the forum of with something fun... While I was torturing a 2n3055, and, I found that is you hooked up around 20v across the emitter/base junction (backwards) it glowed a kind of greenish yellow (but it looks yellow on the camera) 8), although it produced a more heat than anything else. I am guessing that it was producing around 10uW (it was just enough to see in a dark room), and it was drawing a full amp at 15v (a whooping .00001 % efficiency!). To run it for more than a few seconds required heat sinking...
The die...
And with the lights off...
I suppose it you want to nit pick, it is a LET, but it is still just a pn junction that is glowing, so LED seems more appropriate...
Registered Member #75
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 09:30AM
Location: Montana, USA
Posts: 711
This is a rather funny phenomenon: The voltage drop on a silicon PN-junction is only about .7V, whereas a photon of visible light carrys around 2 - 3eV. This suggest that what you are seeing is acutally not the usual LED action of an electron and a hole combining and giving off a photon, but maybe something like two-photon flourescence. Wait, not even two electrons have sufficient energy, but still I think this is at leat some kind of flourescence.
Someone shed some light on this, 10uW is not enough to see things clearly!
Registered Member #10
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 09:45AM
Location: Bunbury, Australia
Posts: 1424
That is very cool. It is reverse biased to 15V so should have the needed eV. Must try this myself with a good camera with lots of magnification and resolution. I have heaps of 2N30555's.
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
It glows in the space between the metal, it is the silicon glowing. Why I am not quite sure. I have a feeling that it has something to due with the breakdown the the gate/emitter junction (and thus it is a high voltage).
Registered Member #79
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 11:35AM
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 673
Don't all silcon P/N junctions glow when current is passed through? An LED is just a modification of this where it glows in the visible spectrum. That's what's in my textbook anyway.
Registered Member #27
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058
I can confirm that it works. It did not emit enough light to get an accurate colour identification with the naked eye. It looked greenish but the eye is easily fooled at low light levels. The transistor was damaged before opening it and running at 12V 970mA.
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Worlds most inefficient LED
