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Show HN: I made some transistor animations (brandonli.net)

212 points by stunningllama ↗ HN
Hi HN, I made some animations of the most important kinds of transistors using my semiconductor simulation, details of which are on the page. I tried to make the visuals as realistic as possible while also aiming for clarity. If you want to go beyond the charge carriers and look at, for example, the electric field, you can do so in the simulation software. The desktop software also has less common devices like IBGTs and SCRs that have similar animations.

The last thread about my software was posted here about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942279

19 comments

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himata4113
it kind of looks unrealistic that there's so little flow, but I guess that makes sense for micro-sized transistors, larger ones that can handle several amps at high voltage should behave differently and would be a rather interesting comparison.
customguy
Ohhh. I have no real knowledge of electricity or electronics, but I know transistors are very fundamental so if you squint a bit, you might say this is what we set in motion when we program, or even just use a computer! Or at least some of it. Not knowing enough to benefit from it I learned nothing, and don't regret a second of that.
smnplk
You can google for "From nand to tetris" or get the book Digital Design and Computer Architecture by Harris to get the idea of how these machines work.
lefra
Thanks, I have an EE education, but I didn't really understood what charges were doing in a BJT. I can use them and apply the formulas, but I never really "grokked" them. This makes it clearer.
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p1esk
I wonder how difficult it would be to convert these to 3D
lloydatkinson
This is one of the coolest animation/diagrams I've ever seen, I wish they had them when I did this at uni. It sure beats whiteboards with scribbles and arrows all over it...
Mohiuddin7
That's really cool. I am again planning to focus more on maths n physics...Hope it helps along..thanks
IshKebab
This is really cool. It would have made understanding these so much easier when I was learning.

One minor suggestion - show the voltages in all the animations.

01jonny01
This would have been invaluable when I did my EEE degree many years ago. I use to draw the charge carries instead.
amingilani
Would you consider releasing these under a permissive license?

I run a (Canadian) ham radio training site[0] and would love to put them in the lessons. With attribution of course.

Edit: Oh gosh, your whole site is full of wonderful illustrations. My niece might finally get her license with these :)

[0]: https://clares.ca

danilor
Cool!

I wonder how different those are to real simulations! Do they treat electrons as point-like, or it's all computation on the fields?

westurner
- Headings w/ id= attr and a Table of Contents?

- > model vortices in superconductors or the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43955906

- Nils Berglund fluid and particle sim videos: https://youtube.com/@nilsberglund

- The other day I tried having a model implement Fedi's superfluid quantum gravity for a black hole simulation in JS and then given also EHT data. I asked it to implement with R3F ReactThreeFiber and Drei (ThreeJS) and NextJS with OpenNext for the GUI and framework. I haven't yet upgraded to WASM optimization for the nonlinear fluid parts. There are parameter combinations that result in mirror-like rejection.

- (FWIU CloudFlare AI rewrote significant parts of NextJS this past year and there's OpenNext to get the full benefits of nextjs on any hosting platform)

- Another neat one to model particles of: LightSlinger antennas

- Gravity from QED, but also MHD Magnetohydrodynamics, and SQR Superfluid Quantum Relativity with a dilatant superfluid to explain why c

abhishek_aieng
Very cool, that's super useful for someone just getting started with electrical engineering.
eimrine
Do this also for triodes/tetrodes/pentodes. I would like to explore a difference between the current (as in BJT) and the voltage (as in field transistor and valves). Currently the only thing I see is that in field transistor the stream is uninterrupted and in BJT the stream is hopping across the base.

I suppose a pentode or a valve working with the grid current is not easy to demonstrate. And I believe no electrical engineer is a real one until he groks the valve theory.

gus_massa
Some feature requests:

IsYou have an online simulator. It'slinked at the top, but I missed it. It would be nice to add a link in ech example to the example runing in the simulator.

I tried the simulator, but I can't see the moving electrons/holes. Also, in the diode simulation, how do I reverse the battery?

Isit posible to show arrows that show the total current in each electrode? Since electrons and holes have different charge, it's hard to see the current. (IIUC the simulator can show the number, but not draw an arrow. So this may be hard to implement.)

jsmcgd
For people who don't have an EE background, like myself, it would be great if for each animation you could add a small explanation for the layman. Looks very cool.