Question

When a Zener diode is operated in forward biased then .

Answer 1

Zener diode:

1. A Zener diode is a silicon-containing semiconductor device that allows current to flow in any direction. It may be in a forward or reverse-biased direction.
2. The diode consists of a kind of very special, very heavily doped p-n junction, specially designed to carry the current in the reverse biased direction when some amount of voltage is reached.
3. Zener diode is often used as a shunt voltage regulator device for regulating the voltage across smaller loads.
4. This type of diode, when connected parallel to the load, makes it reverse biased, and once this diode exceeds some value of voltage, the voltage across the load will also become constant throughout.
5. Zener diodes operate exactly similarly to conventional diodes when they are in the forward-bias mode.
6. They have a bias turn-on voltage, which ranges between $0.3$ and $0.7V$.
7. When they are connected in reverse mode, there is always a small leakage current flow in most of the applications.
8. When this diode is biased in the forward direction, it behaves like a very normal signal diode, which passes the current and increases linearly with voltage.
9. But when a reverse voltage is applied across the Zener diode and attains the breakdown voltage of the device, a huge amount of current starts to flow through the diode.

Hence, when a Zener diode is operated in forward biased then it behaves like a normal diode.