Marcus Casillas

U51931362
Lei Zhang
Adam Pearson

Silicon Diodes, LEDs, and Boltzmanns Constant

Introduction:

The goal of this lab is to experimentally calculate Boltzmann's constant by measuring the

current and voltage across a diode.

Procedure:

To do this we attached a silicon diode to a power supply. We measured current with an

multimeter in series with the circuit and another multimeter to measure voltage across the diode.

We then turned on the power supply and recorded the current running through the circuit, first

with reverse, then forward bias. We then repeated the process while submerging the diode in

liquid nitrogen to cool it. Lastly we swapped the traditional diode for an LED and ran a constant

current through it. We recorded the voltage across the LED then submerged it in liquid nitrogen

again recording it's voltage.

Data
Using the formula provided in the lab handout we calculated the Boltzmann constant to be 1.82

x 10-23 J/K which is the right order of magnitude.

Using the equation again, we find that the Boltzmanns constant is 4.18 x 10-22. Using the LED,

we found a voltage of 3.3 Volts when we ran the 0.3 A current through it. After submerging it in

liquid Nitrogen however the voltage went up to 5.3 V and changed from green to yellow light.

Questions
 1. We measure the voltage across the diode rather than the power supply because we

want to observe the effects of its resistance.

2. For small voltages of forward bias, V/RV dominates up until around 0.6 volts.

3. High current data is likely determined by the series resistance effect more so than the

temperature.

4. Removal of the temperature effects did appear to affect our result for Boltzmanns

Constant as it changed by an order of magnitude.

5. Although the liquid Nitrogen gave a slightly different result for Boltzmanns constant both

are fairly close to the accepted value.

6. Our data shows only some evidence of the importance of these non-ideal factors.

7. When it is cooled the voltage across the LED increases showing that it's energy gap

increases as well.

8. The visual change in the LED suggests that the power dissipation is less when the LED

is cooled.

9. When a green LED is cooled the color changed to red and yellow changes to

red/orange. This means that the diode is emitting a longer wavelength of light because

of the lowered energy dissipation.

Conclusion
In this experiment we were able to calculate the Boltzmanns constant to a fairly high degree of
accuracy finding an experimental result of 1.82 x 10-23 J/K. We also observed the effects of
temperature on the energy gap of an LED and its energy dissipation.