What means
Right to left: the triangle points the way current goes. A diode is a one-way valve for electricity. It lets current through easily in one direction and all but blocks it in the other, which is why power supplies and chargers use diodes to help turn mains alternating current into the direct current electronics need, and an LED is a diode that glows when current flows. The bar marks the cathode, the end current leaves by; many real diodes carry a printed band on that same end.
This is a text character, not a picture. It belongs to a set of schematic pieces in Unicode, including resistor, inductor and antenna segments, taken from the graphics characters of home computers of the 1970s and 1980s. The 2021 proposal that brought them in says they were designed to join thin box-drawing lines such as , so a whole circuit can be laid out in a text file or a terminal.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
1
Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
2Why do I see an empty box instead of the symbol?
Your font, or the app, doesn't support it yet. The character arrived in Unicode 16.0 in 2024, and as of 2026 font support still varies, so another font or device may show it.
Is the triangle the anode or the cathode?
The flat side of the triangle is the anode; the bar it points at is the cathode. Current enters at the anode and leaves at the cathode.
More like this
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Collections with
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How to type or find
- Search it as
- diode · diode symbol · left diode · circuit symbol · schematic · cathode · rectifier · electronics
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𜰎\1CC0ECodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.