LED – Understanding Forward Current vs Forward Voltage

led

I am trying to make a simple circuit for a nametag for kids to solder at a workshop. The LED I was planning to use is 151033BS03000 it has a graph of forward current vs forward voltage. What is this? Don't I determine the current of the LED by my resistor value?

graph

circuit

Best Answer

The resistor limits current and the LED curve is right

When I mentioned that both are right, I mean it this way:

enter image description here

Assuming, for example, that your voltage source is a low-impedance \$3.3\:\text{V}\$ (note the circle on the x-axis at that point), then the green line represents a \$330\:\Omega\$ resistor and the light blue line represents a \$180\:\Omega\$ resistor.

Let's look at where these lines intersect with the LED curve:

  • Green: approximately \$2.5\:\text{V}\$ and \$2.5\:\text{mA}\$ -- so the \$330\:\Omega\$ resistor drops near \$825\:\text{mV}\$, which is just enough to make up the difference to reach \$3.3\:\text{V}\$ given that the LED is running at \$2.5\:\text{V}\$.
  • Light Blue: approximately \$2.6\:\text{V}\$ and \$4\:\text{mA}\$ -- so the \$180\:\Omega\$ resistor drops near \$720\:\text{mV}\$, which is just enough to make up the difference to reach \$3.3\:\text{V}\$ given that the LED is running at \$2.6\:\text{V}\$.

That's what a load line does for you. Makes it easy to find the operating point.

And you can see that, yes, the resistor limits the current, and, yes, the diode curve is correct, as well.

Creating a load line

To draw the load line for any resistor, just start at the \$V_{_\text{CC}}=3.3\:\text{V}\$ point on the x-axis (or, whatever your \$V_{_\text{CC}}\$ value happens to be) and then compute \$\frac{V_{_\text{CC}}}{R}\$ to pick out the y-axis value and mark that position there. Then get out a ruler and draw a line between these two points.

CR1220 as a power source

Tony does bring up a very important point in comments below my answer, given that you've specified a CR1220 battery rather than a low-impedance power supply. These batteries do have significant internal resistance (one that varies over time, as well) just as Tony wrote. He's quite right to suggest that the above analysis would only apply with a low-impedance power supply.

The internal resistance of the CR1220 might be as high as around 1000 Ohms, skimming a datasheet or two and doing some guess work. Even assuming that the datasheets are overly conservative, it's still going to be in the hundreds of Ohms.

Let's assume that the CR1220 has an internal resistance of \$470\:\Omega\$, just to pick something, and that you don't use an external resistor. Then the new chart might look like this:

enter image description here

I've added the red load line for the assumed internal resistance of the CR1220, above. (And it's nominal voltage starting point, which is \$3.0\:\text{V}\$.) Here, you can see that it intercepts the LED curve at somewhere between \$1\:\text{mA}\$ and \$2\:\text{mA}\$ and an LED voltage perhaps a little less than \$2.4\:\text{V}\$.

It may very well be that an external resistor isn't needed. If you supply one, you could consider just shorting it out to see what happens. (Given the CR1220, I would not be worried about attempting that experiment.)

Summary

But the earlier point above remains. Regardless of what's incorporated to make them, load lines make it quite easy in the end to work out the operating point when facing non-linear curves such as those presented by LEDs.

P.S. Looking at the LED curve, the function that seems to approximate it well is a simplified Shockley diode model of about \$I=1.96\times 10^{-10}\left(e^{^\frac{V}{0.153}}-1\right)\$. (That sets the emission coefficient to \$\eta\approx 5.9\$ and limits the bulk impedance to about \$2\:\Omega\$, I think.)