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A clamper will bind the upper or lower extreme of a waveform to a fixed DC voltage level. These circuits are also known as DC voltage restorers. Clampers can be constructed in both positive and negative polarities. When unbiased, clamping circuits will fix the voltage lower limit (or upper limit, in the case of negative clampers) to 0 volts.
Baker clamp is a generic name for a class of electronic circuits that reduce the storage time of a switching bipolar junction transistor (BJT) by applying a nonlinear negative feedback through various kinds of diodes. The reason for slow turn-off times of saturated BJTs is the stored charge in the base.
A clamper circuit is not a clipper, but the simple diode version has a similar topology to a clipper with the exception that the resistor is replaced with a capacitor. The clamper circuit fixes either the positive or negative peaks at a fixed voltage (determined by the biasing voltage) rather than clipping them off.
This simple diode clamp will clamp the negative peaks of the incoming waveform to the common rail voltage. A diode clamp circuit can take a periodic alternating current signal that oscillates between positive and negative values, and vertically displace it such that either the positive or the negative peaks occur at a prescribed level. The ...
The circuits are now known as Baker clamps. One of those clamp circuits used a single germanium diode to clamp a silicon transistor in a circuit configuration that is the same as the Schottky transistor. [22]: 11, 30 The circuit relied on the germanium diode having a lower forward voltage drop than a silicon diode would have.
The actual clamping occurs in roughly one picosecond, but in a practical circuit the inductance of the wires leading to the device imposes a higher limit. This makes transient-voltage-suppression diodes useful for protection against very fast and often damaging voltage transients.
While standard silicon diodes have a forward voltage drop of about 0.7 V and germanium diodes 0.3 V, Schottky diodes' voltage drop at forward biases of around 1 mA is in the range of 0.15 V to 0.46 V (see the 1N5817 [6] and 1N5711 [7]), which makes them useful in voltage clamping applications and prevention of transistor saturation.
The Villard circuit, conceived by Paul Ulrich Villard, [p 1] consists simply of a capacitor and a diode. While it has the great benefit of simplicity, its output has very poor ripple characteristics. Essentially, the circuit is a diode clamp circuit. The capacitor is charged on the negative half cycles to the peak AC voltage (V pk). The output ...