Advantages and disadvantages of TRIAC

There are some advantages of TRIAC which are given below,

• The TRIAC need single fuse for protection.
• It can be triggered with positive or negative polarities of gate pulses.
• A safe breakdown in either direction is possible but for SCR protection should be given with parallel diode.
• It needs only a single heat sink of slightly larger size where as for SCR two heat sinks should be required of smaller size.
• When the voltage is reduced to zero the TRIAC turns OFF.

There are some disadvantages of TRIAC which are given below,

• It can be triggered in any direction so we need to be careful about triggering circuit.
• As compared to SCR (silicon controlled rectifier) it has low ratings.
• The TRIACs are not much reliable as compared to SCR.
• This is not suitable for DC applications.
• The dv/dt rating is  very low as compared to SCR.
• It has a very high switching delay.

TRIAC