Starting today, the plan is to do a curve trace of one kind of device a day from now untill december 24. Some will just be a single trace, some will have explaination of one kind or another, and some may get full derrivation of the physics.
Today we are going to start off with a couple diodes. First out is the trusty 1N4148 diode:
Looking more closely at the forward curve:
From this curve we can determine the slope and use the Shockley diode equation to get the diode parameters.
Doing a standard unnamed Germanium diode then the trace looks like this:
And for fun, here is a Mullard OA81 curve:
RF and electronics blog LA3PNA 