Q.Distinguish between Zener breakdown and avalanche breakdown in a p-n junction diode.

In Zener breakdown, heavy doping makes the depletion region very thin, so even a modest reverse voltage sets up an extremely strong field across it -- strong enough to directly pull electrons out of their covalent bonds within the depletion region, at a comparatively low and very precisely reproducible reverse voltage. In avalanche breakdown, occurring in an ordinary, more lightly doped diode, the existing small population of minority carriers is accelerated by the (wider) depletion region's field to high kinetic energies; on colliding with lattice atoms they knock loose further electron-hole pairs, which are themselves accelerated and knock loose still more -- a rapidly multiplying chain reaction that suddenly floods the juncti …

Contrast the mechanism (direct bond rupture vs carrier-multiplication chain reaction) and the t …

• Treating Zener and avalanche breakdown as the same thing -- they are two genuinely different physical mechanisms. …