My interest in early heart pacemaker technology often leads me into forgotten corners of mid-century electronics. Recently, while analyzing an RF pacemaker circuit, I encountered a part I hadn’t seen since my youth in the 1970s: the Shockley four-layer diode.
I dug up some of my old parts and went down the rabbit hole on the history and operation of the Shockley four-layer diode. My whitepaper on the subject is at: www.prutchi.com