Rectifiers an electrical circuit used to convert AC into DC current. A rectifier is a diode that causes the current to flow in only one direction. The output of the rectifier is essentially half AC current, which is then filtered into DC.
Bridge rectifiers a bridge rectifier makes use of four diodes in a bridge arrangement to achieve full wave rectification. This is a widely used configuration, both with individual diodes wired as shown and with single component bridges where the diode bridge is wired internally.
Bridge rectifiers advantage the main benefit of bridge rectifiers over conventional full wave rectifiers is that with a given transformer, the bridge rectifiers generate a voltage output that is nearly twice that of conventional full wave circuit. Another benefit of bridge rectifiers is the low ratio of peak inverse voltage to average output voltage.