What are LEDs and how do LEDs Work?

What is an LED? How do LEDs work?

Many of us take the humble LED, or light emitting diode, for granted despite their ubiquity.

LEDs not only show up in many of your projects, they find a home in a myriad of consumer and commercial products and are now making headway into lighting, driving incandescent and fluorescent lighting into obsolescence.

Before we answer the question what is an LED or delve into how LEDs work, let’s do a quick history lesson on a few common types of light emitting devices you’re probably familiar with. After that, we’ll talk about what LEDs are made of and how they work. Then, we’ll get into the practical side of LEDs and how to use LEDs in your projects and designs.

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How Diodes Work – An Introduction

This post explores the basics of how diodes work.

A diode is the most basic useful semiconductor device. It has two leads and acts as a one-way gate for electric current. Diodes have a multitude of uses, some of which we’ll touch on later.

We’ll start our tutorial on how diodes work with a very quick overview of basic semiconductor physics. This will serve as the basis for which all diodes work.