The current flowing through a p-n junction diode (our one-way gate for electricity) is primarily controlled by four interacting factors.

The most immediate control is the voltage applied across the diode: once the push from the battery reaches a certain minimum strength (the turn-on voltage), the current flow explodes exponentially, meaning a very small increase in voltage causes a massive jump in current. This flow is extremely sensitive to temperature, as heat causes the internal atoms to jiggle, which significantly increases the diode’s built-in “leakiness” (the saturation current, I_s).

Furthermore, temperature also slightly weakens the internal barrier, meaning less voltage is needed to start the explosive flow. Setting the baseline for how much current can flow are two design features: the diode area and the ideality factor.

The diode area is simply the size of the junction, acting like the width of a bridge; a wider area allows proportionally more current to cross.

Finally, the ideality factor is a quality number (usually between 1 and 2) that accounts for imperfections, such as charges crashing and disappearing (recombination) inside the junction; a higher ideality factor means a less perfect, less steep current curve, requiring a bit more voltage to achieve a large current flow.

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