 The great search brought to you by digikey data for it. Thank you digikey Lady-ated user powers of engineering every single week to show you how to find things on digikey.com Lady-ated, what are you trying to find this week? Okay, so I had to like pull it up cuz I was like what part am I looking for? What do you know where? Okay, you know how like last week I was saying how like well You know the silk and shortage is like not so bad anymore I'm able to get some parts like remember when I couldn't get like transistors and diodes well My favorite diode was unavailable this week And it's got like a 73 week lead time and so I thought I would show How I found an alternative and there was again It's like it's a little bit sneaky because the first thing I did was the wrong thing So let me find the the part Better than the last thing you did with the wrong thing better to get better to get that out of the way That's true. Like I think okay. All right. So let's go to the computer. I'll show off this my favorite diode so I really like using the NBR 120 for my Shotkey diodes. I use it a lot of times in power supplies, you know if you have USB power battery power you have O-ring diodes and then whichever one is higher automatically switches over Chucky guys are just like they're great for so many things You know that they're used for switching regulators. They're using power supply Sometimes I use them when I just I need like a you know, one directional switch, you know for like a button You know use them on my RP 2040 boards and not that NBR 120 maybe a smaller one, but still love this love this diode None stock and not in stock. We do have some but we're gonna run out really soon. And so Seeing that there wasn't any available and that the manufacturer lead time is is a stunning 73 weeks Hold on There you go It's stunning 73 weeks I mean like that's then I were talking like 2024 to get this diode And I was a little bit like scared because I use this in so many designs again like boost converters buck converters You know almost every feather uses it as part of the power regulator system so The thing about this is When it was a little sneaky is you know, I was like, you know, it's not he doesn't shock. He died. No, not really. There's actually It's sometimes the simpler the part the tougher it is to find an alternative spec because It's deceptive. I found that diodes are very deceptive people are like, oh I mean, yes, if it's a one and four and you know four one four eight You're pretty much good to go But once you get into these like power diodes or shocky diodes, there's there's specifications that you really You may care about so the thing I particularly and another thing is I expect this part like a decade ago Right, like I've used this one part in so many boards, but when I first picked it as part of like my power supply, you know family You know, I kind of I didn't make a note of what it was that I liked about it So the party was also figuring out what what was it about this diode that I really liked But the thing that then I realized first off, you know, 20 volts So it can be used for almost all, you know, 12 volt, you know boost supplies or you know buck converters USB basically your 20 volt is one of the lowest voltages you can get One amp why they pick one amp well because almost everything that we make is USB power And USB pretty much only gives you about an amp of current So I don't really need to go above that for constant current usage The thing that was really nice about this is the ultra ultra low forward voltage So 340 millivolts forward voltage at one amp, which is which is very low again most non-shot key diodes your 4 and 4,001 etc. You're looking about 700 to 900 millivolts easily at a volt and you know when you're dealing with electronics running at 3 volts or 5 volts You know that half volt Well, is it's gonna be the difference between how long you can run on a lipo battery? Especially if you have you know, you have your lipo battery and then you have a shocky diode and then a 3.3 volt regulator you know, you want to make sure that that You know that drop is point one volt or point two volts for most of the use case So you're not losing all of that power through the diode before it gets to the regulator and then the regulator You know these little bit of headroom as well So the mistake I made was like well One in four one four eight what you know one in four thousand one the family, you know I want the NBR 120 family So let's just look at that and see what's available and you know, yes Looks like there's a couple different forward voltages. I looked at active and then I Searched by quantity available and there was nothing in stock from you know on semi So that was kind of a downer. There are a couple different, you know slight part variations You know some with 350 450 or 500 millivolts So I was kind of like oh, you know, this is this is not good because I know that I really like this particularly low Dropout type rectifier, but my mistake was I shouldn't have searched for the family name What I should actually do and I also search for the package case And that was a mistake also because there's actually quite a few very similar package cases What you want to do is just look for a you know active shop key diode 20 volts is not so important. I do want one amp and I want like a fast recovery type the reverse current I just want to be you know, that or less and Surface mount and then when I got to the next page Can because actually the reverse voltage is not as important The forward voltage I'll figure that out in a moment. So the supplier package here There's actually quite a few all in the same family. Remember it was the SOD 123f, but there's a like a bunch that are all very like SOD 123w PFL f a I mean there's gonna be like different heights maybe or like specific packages I don't care as long as it fits on the footprint. So You know, I selected those and then again, I really want that low forward voltage and so The one I was comparing to was like, you know, three fifty ish And I'll go up to four hundred maybe just to see what the what the specs are because again, they go they go quite high but I do want to be a low forward voltage and then I Searched by quantity available and I got actually quite a few, you know, pretty good options. So This one was really nice the MBR X 120 see you gotta be careful because sometimes it's like in the family but the family name is not the exact same name and then Also from the same, you know family not family similar MBR 1020 Right slightly different named But also very low forward voltage And also it's actually got the same reversal current leakage, which is also important to me. I want to reduce that Currently good. So this one this this panjeet International actually ended up being the part that I got because they have Plenty in stock, but I do want to also note that in addition to like, you know, the MBR One X 20 There's also the PME G family of Shockey diodes, so this one the next next period NXP They don't use MBR 1020 or 120. They have a difference named, you know, the way they they named their their low Dropout Shockey diodes is PME G and then the voltage, you know, in this case 30 and then 10 that current, you know, 1 amp 30 volts And these were actually about the same price. Also Very good 360 Millivolts and then the PME G 2010 You know had pretty excellent reverse leakage and also very low Forward voltage. So a couple different really good options But you'll see there's not a ton of options in stock like this is, you know marketplace ones And we look at this but the MBR X 120 and the MBR 1020 Are both excellent options to replace for ultra low dropout Shockey diodes that are one amp could continuous current. I thought you're a church