LearningObjectives-WJEC.docVIP

Learning Objectives: At the end of this topic you will be able to; draw and understand the use of diodes in half wave and full wave bridge rectifiers; calculate the peak value of the output voltage of half wave and full wave rectifiers given the rms input voltage. Rectification. In the previous section we discussed the use of alternating current to form the basis of a power supply for electronic components. In that section we learnt the difference between peak and rms voltage. At the end of the section we posed an interesting problem which was that if an alternating current supply is to be used to power modern electronic circuits then we must have a way of changing a.c. into d.c. There are a couple of stages in the conversion process, and we will consider the first of these in this topic – the process of rectification. To achieve this we will need to use one of the components we met in Topic 2.3, and this is the silicon diode. You should remember from our previous work that the diode has the following characteristic, i.e. only allows current to flow in one direction. Now we will consider what happens when an a.c. source is applied to a silicon diode. The graph from the oscilloscope below shows the effect of diode on the a.c. voltage. The blue trace, shows the output from the step down transformer or a.c. voltage source, and the red trace shows the output after the diode. There are a couple of things to notice from the graph: The negative part of the a.c. graph has been removed. The voltage across the resistor is now a variable voltage d.c. signal. The peak voltage across the resistor is 0.7V less than peak of the input signal due to the voltage drop across the diode. The process of changing a.c. into d.c. is called rectification. The graph shows that we have created a variable voltage d.c. output from an a.c. source. Unfortunately this method of rectification wastes 50% of the energy from the a.c. source because the negative half cycle is completely blocked f