Design and Evaluation of an Educational Simulation for the P-N Junction Diode

This paper discusses the design and the preliminary evaluation of an educational simulation of a P-N junction diode. The P-N diode is the most basic semiconductor device and exhibits a non-linear current vs. voltage dependence, which has been shown to pose many challenges to the students. A simulation was designed to include several important dynamic diagrams in both linear and logarithmic scales, so the students could see their dependence on the density of acceptor/donor atoms and on the applied voltage. The students could compare a silicon-based P-N diode with a germanium-based one for the same doping levels. An exploratory study was pursued with a class taking a 3rd year materials science course for engineering students which included a section on semiconductor physics. Various misconceptions before and after the activity were extracted through coding the answers. One of the biggest challenges was explaining reverse bias, for which half of the students provided incorrect explanations. These students’ evaluation will help improve the simulation in future iterations and inform the development of more sophisticated instruction tools to facilitate conceptual understanding.