Battery backup voltage regulator (an invention story)
My Codidact paper Battery backup voltage regulator (an invention story) I have dedicated the next two Codidact papers to my students from the laboratory exercises on semiconductor devices; this is the first paper. Here is what it is all about... When they were testing various diodes, I suggested that they investigate a germanium transistor as a diode. The reason for this was that there were no good germanium diodes in the lab but there were good transistors. This reminded me of an idea from the past about a device that uses a transistor acting as both a transistor and a diode. And I decided to tell them this story. Here it is... Paper Goals and objectives Motivation. Inspired that there is a place on the web where simple but clever circuit ideas are encouraged, I decided to share another 1-transistor circuit trick. Besides, to make the story even more interesting than before, I decided to show, step-by-step, how the circuit was (could be) "invented"... as an exampl...