How do high voltage diodes work?

https://www.hornby-electronic.com/high-voltage-diode/

Oh man, high voltage diodes. Okay, so these little guys are kinda like traffic cops for electricity, but at super high voltages. You know regular diodes, right? The ones that only let electricity flow in one direction? Well, high voltage diodes do the same thing, but for circuits dealing with way higher power levels—like in X-ray machines, power supplies, or even those crazy old-school CRT televisions. Yeah, remember those? The ones that weighed a ton and made that weird static sound when you turned them on?

Anyway, back to high voltage diodes. Imagine you’ve got a river, and you only want water to flow one way. A regular diode is like a one-way valve, but if the water pressure (or in this case, voltage) gets too high, a normal valve might break. High voltage diodes are built tougher to handle all that extra pressure—so they don’t fry when dealing with, like, thousands of volts.

And here’s something kinda cool: high voltage diodes aren’t just one big diode. Nope. They’re actually a bunch of smaller diodes stacked together in a series. It’s called a “series stack” or a “diode chain,” which helps them share the voltage load. That way, instead of one diode trying to take on, say, 10,000 volts all at once and exploding (which, let’s be honest, would be kinda fun to watch—but also dangerous), each little diode in the chain handles a smaller portion of that voltage. Pretty smart, huh?

Oh! And another thing—high voltage diodes are usually made of special materials like silicon or even glass-passivated junctions to keep them from breaking down under high stress. Ever seen a burnt-out circuit board? Yeah, not pretty. That’s what these materials help prevent.

Now, where do we actually see these things in real life? Well, X-ray machines use high voltage diodes to convert alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC), which is super important because the X-ray tube needs a steady, high-voltage DC supply to work properly. Without these diodes? No X-rays.

Same with microwave ovens! Ever wonder how those things generate all that power to heat up your leftover pizza? There’s a whole circuit inside that includes—you guessed it—high voltage diodes, helping to convert and control the high voltage necessary to make the magnetron (the thing that actually produces the microwaves) work.

So yeah, high voltage diodes are kind of unsung heroes. You don’t really think about them, but they’re doing all this heavy lifting behind the scenes. It’s kinda like... I dunno, the bass player in a band. You might not notice them right away, but if they weren’t there, the whole thing would sound off, you know what I mean?

Anyway, that’s the gist of it. Does this make sense? I mean, I can go deeper if you want, but I figure this is enough to wrap your head around it without getting too lost in the weeds. Oh, and if you ever take apart an old CRT TV or a microwave (please don’t do this unless you know what you're doing, by the way), you might just see one of these high voltage diodes in action. Pretty neat, huh?