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                          For DC switching circuits this “one-way” switching characteristic may be acceptable as once triggered all the DC power is delivered straight to the load. But in Sinusoidal AC Switching Circuits this unidirectional switching may be a problem as it only conducts during one half of the cycle (like a half-wave rectifier) when the Anode is positive irrespective of whatever the Gate signal is doing. Then for AC operation only half the power is delivered to the load by a thyristor.

In order to obtain full-wave power control we could connect a single thyristor inside a full-wave bridge rectifier which triggers on each positive half-wave, or to connect two thyristors together in inverse parallel (back-to-back) as shown below but this increases both the complexity and number of components used in the switching circuit.

There is however, another type of semiconductor device called a “Triode AC Switch” or Triac for short which is also a member of the thyristor family that be used as a solid state power switching device but more importantly it is a “bidirectional” device. In other words, a Triac can be triggered into conduction by both positive and negative voltages applied to its Anode and with both positive and negative trigger pulses applied to its Gate terminal making it a two-quadrant switching Gate controlled device.

A Triac behaves just like two conventional thyristors connected together in inverse parallel (back-to-back) with respect to each other and because of this arrangement the two thyristors share a common Gate terminal all within a single three-terminal package.

Since a triac conducts in both directions of a sinusoidal waveform, the concept of an Anode terminal and a Cathode terminal used to identify the main power terminals of a thyristor are replaced with identifications of: MT₁, for Main Terminal 1 and MT₂ for Main Terminal 2 with the Gate terminal G referenced the same.

In most AC switching applications, the triac gate terminal is associated with the MT₁ terminal, similar to the gate-cathode relationship of the thyristor or the base-emitter relationship of the transistor. The construction, P-N doping and schematic symbol used to represent a Triac is given below.

We now know that a “triac” is a 4-layer, PNPN in the positive direction and a NPNP in the negative direction, three-terminal bidirectional device that blocks current in its “OFF” state acting like an open-circuit switch, but unlike a conventional thyristor, the triac can conduct current in either direction when triggered by a single gate pulse. Then a triac has four possible triggering modes of operation as follows.

And these four modes in which a triac can be operated are shown using the triacs I-V characteristics curves.

In Quadrant ?, the triac is usually triggered into conduction by a positive gate current, labelled above as mode ?+. But it can also be triggered by a negative gate current, mode ?–. Similarly, in Quadrant ???, triggering with a negative gate current, –?_G is also common, mode ???– along with mode ???+. Modes ?– and ???+ are, however, less sensitive configurations requiring a greater gate current to cause triggering than the more common triac triggering modes of ?+ and ???–.

Also, just like silicon controlled rectifiers (SCR’s), triac’s also require a minimum holding current I_H to maintain conduction at the waveforms cross over point. Then even though the two thyristors are combined into one single triac device, they still exhibit individual electrical characteristics such as different breakdown voltages, holding currents and trigger voltage levels exactly the same as we would expect from a single SCR device.

The Triac is most commonly used semiconductor device for switching and power control of AC systems as the triac can be switched “ON” by either a positive or negative Gate pulse, regardless of the polarity of the AC supply at that time. This makes the triac ideal to control a lamp or AC motor load with a very basic triac switching circuit given below.

The circuit above shows a simple DC triggered triac power switching circuit. With switch SW1 open, no current flows into the Gate of the triac and the lamp is therefore “OFF”. When SW1 is closed, Gate current is applied to the triac from the battery supply V_G via resistor R and the triac is driven into full conduction acting like a closed switch and full power is drawn by the lamp from the sinusoidal supply.

As the battery supplies a positive Gate current to the triac whenever switch SW1 is closed, the triac is therefore continually gated in modes ?+ and ???+ regardless of the polarity of terminal MT₂.

Of course, the problem with this simple triac switching circuit is that we would require an additional positive or negative Gate supply to trigger the triac into conduction. But we can also trigger the triac using the actual AC supply voltage itself as the gate triggering voltage. Consider the circuit below.

The circuit shows a triac used as a simple static AC power switch providing an “ON”-“OFF” function similar in operation to the previous DC circuit. When switch SW1 is open, the triac acts as an open switch and the lamp passes zero current. When SW1 is closed the triac is gated “ON” via current limiting resistor R and self-latches shortly after the start of each half-cycle, thus switching full power to the lamp load.

As the supply is sinusoidal AC, the triac automatically unlatches at the end of each AC half-cycle as the instantaneous supply voltage and thus the load current briefly falls to zero but re-latches again using the opposite thyristor half on the next half cycle as long as the switch remains closed. This type of switching control is generally called full-wave control due to the fact that both halves of the sine wave are being controlled.

As the triac is e

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