I once found out the hard way that LEDs can be static sensitive. Testing 5mm LEDs, I put my meter's probe to a LED and it went out. Turns out a small ESD shorted the LED.
I did some tests with a couple power LEDs (Cree XR-E and Luxeon 1 white) With reverse bias in series with a 5mm LED and a resistor across 9v supply, the Luxeon conducts enough to make the other LED glow faintly. The with the XR-E, the other LED blinks when I touch the wire to the terminal as if the XR-E has a capacitor across its LED. A small capacitance across the LED would conduct a small ESD quite nicely. Wonder if this is what they are doing. Nothing found on the data sheet.
I did some tests with a couple power LEDs (Cree XR-E and Luxeon 1 white) With reverse bias in series with a 5mm LED and a resistor across 9v supply, the Luxeon conducts enough to make the other LED glow faintly. The with the XR-E, the other LED blinks when I touch the wire to the terminal as if the XR-E has a capacitor across its LED. A small capacitance across the LED would conduct a small ESD quite nicely. Wonder if this is what they are doing. Nothing found on the data sheet.
