The Mosfet Dilemma

Home

Contact

When soldering the mosfet use a heat sink between the solder and the body.  I often hold my thumb on the housing and stop if it gets too warm.  I blew one out from static electricity not too long ago.  It does happen.  Make sure you have very good connections especially if you use bi-filar coils.

This is how they were explained to me in college.  It looks so simple.

    What I have found is with the feedback of voltage from the plates storing some energy, the pulse doesn't really happen that much.  I can turn my pulse generator down to blinking once every 5 seconds and there is still voltage coming back.  I think we have now all experienced that.  The plates themselves work as a capacitor.  This is why it is supposed to work.  Hook the pulse generator to the plates and they become the "Coil" and the pulse generator becomes the "Distributor".  So far this hasn't worked at all.  The only "actual" explanation I can give is a "Coil" is given a ground to spark.  You would think water would be a good ground, but where does it get it?.  It doesn't work bad if you run a ground into the water for it to discharge.  This actually allows some of the mosfets to work a little, but having a large plate under water is like having an oil filled capacitor (it takes longer to saturate it).  My belief is if the energy has a path to follow, it will work.  Also a diode can help stop feedback so your mosfet will not get saturated.

Here is an explanation on how they work
http://en.wikipedia.org/

Here is a datasheet (pdf format) for a typical Mosfet
irf540n.pdf

Here is a good link for explaining MOSFETS. (thanks Don)
http://www.powerdesigners.com

Here is my list which will get updated as I try different ones.  When the time comes and you see "Great!"  in the results column, is when we will be able to try some different styles of fuel cell.