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I made some transistor animations

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Hi HN, I made some animations of the most important kinds of transistors using my semiconductor simulation, details of which are on the page. I tried to make the visuals as realistic as possible while also aiming for clarity. If you want to go beyond the charge carriers and look at, for example, the electric field, you can do so in the simulation software. The desktop software also has less common devices like IBGTs and SCRs that have similar animations.The last thread about my software was posted here about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942279

HN · launched Jul 24, 2026 · 212 upvotes (top 3%) · 0 views

Niche: engineering simulation and modeling engines · 20 launches, 1 in the last 7 days · Explore this niche →

Category and tags
  • Education
  • Content generation
  • Developer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

More like this: all 20 launches in engineering simulation and modeling engines →

Could you build this?

No Accurately simulating semiconductor physics (drift-diffusion equations, Poisson's equation, charge-carrier recombination) requires deep domain knowledge in solid-state physics and numerical methods.

What it would actually take: Building this requires implementing numerical PDE solvers (e.g., finite volume or finite difference methods like the Scharfetter-Gummel scheme) to solve coupled non-linear drift-diffusion and Poisson equations in semiconductors. It requires deep expertise in condensed matter/device physics and scientific computing, rendered via Canvas/WebGL.

Discussion

20 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: From Nand to Tetris course/book, Digital Design and Computer Architecture by Harris

Concerns raised: Web version has significantly fewer features than desktop version, Examples in animations use newer file format incompatible with web version, Version number differences not clearly communicated to users, Hard to see current visualization when electrons and holes have different charges, Vector field brightness slider requires excessive tweaking for visibility

Feature requests: Add gamma/brightness slider for better visualization of current magnitude, Show arrows indicating total current at each electrode, Add layman's explanations for each animation for non-EE background users, Simulate triodes/tetrodes/pentodes to explore voltage-controlled vs current-controlled behavior, Model electrons in advanced materials (graphene, carbon nanotubes, boron nitride nanotubes)

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 128 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #5 of 129 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 266 days after the earliest competitor.

Related data

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