Light Emitting Diode

A p-n junction diode which emits spontaneous emission of radiation in the visible and IR regions when forward biased is called Light Emitting Diode. This converts the input electrical energy into optical energy in the visible or IR spectrum depending on the semiconductor material

Light Emitting Diode

Working Principle: The energy conversion takes place in two stages 1. The energy of carriers in the semiconductors is raised above the equilibrium value by electrical input energy 2. Most of these carriers after having lived a mean life time in the higher energy state, give up their energy as spontaneous emission of photons with energy equal to bandgap Eg of the semiconductor.

Choice of Materials
The choice of semiconductor material depends upon the required wavelength of material in terms of their bandgap energy. Lower bandgap materials are required for IR applications and energy band gaps greater than or equal to about 2eV materials are needed for a light in the visible part. The most important IV-V compounds are binary compounds GaAs(bandgap= 1.43eV, emission near IR region), GaP (bandgap=2.26eV, red & green emission)

Structure of a planner LED showing the emission of light from all surfaces

 Simpler fabrication: There are no mirror facts Cost: The simpler construction of the LED leads to a much reduced cost. Reliability: LED does not exhibit catastrophic degradation and has proved far less sensitive to gradual degradation than the injection laser. Less temperature dependence: The light output against current is less affected by temperature than the corresponding characteristic for the injection laser. Simpler drive circuitary: Temperature compensation circuits are unnecessary as it can be operated in lower drive currents and have reduced temperature dependence. Linearity: As ideally the LED has a linear light output against current characteristic unlike the injection laser and advantageous where analog modulation is considered.

Advantage of LED

Differences between LED and Diode laser

The output from the laser LED is incoherent, whereas that from a diode laser is coherent. The light from an LED has a broad spectral width and beam divergence and therefore information carrying capacity of a system is much less. The light from a diode laser has both spatial and temporal coherence and so is highly monochromatic Diode laser is highly directional Coupling the LED to the fiber is more difficult and the amount of power it can launch into the fiber is relatively small. LED is less expensive compared to laser diodes.

Light Emitting Diode (LED)

The injected electrons and holes appear in high concentrations in this transition region. At low forward current level, the electronhole recombinations cause spontaneous emission of photons and the junction acts as an LED. The band width of the emitted light will be larger. As the current is increased, the intensity of light increases linearly.

Light power

Laser diode

10 mW

LED

5 mW

Current
50 mA 100 mA

Typical optical power output vs. forward current for a LED and a laser diode.
1999 S.O. Kasap, Optoelectronics (P rentice Hall)

Optical Detectors
This is the most essential component of an optical fiber communication system. Crucial in dictating the overall system performance Converts optical signal, received from the fiber, into electrical signal.

Basic requirements of a photodetector

Sensitivity at the required wavelength Efficient conversion of photons to electrons Fast response to operate at high frequencies Low noise for reduced errors Sufficient area for efficient coupling to optical fiber High reliability capable of continuous stable operation at room temperature Low cost

PIN Photodiode
The most common semiconductor photodetector is the PIN photodiode Consists of p and n regions separated by a very lightly n-doped intrinsic (i) region. Operated at sufficiently large reverse bias voltage Under illumination the current varies almost linearly with the incident light

The pin Photodiode

pin photodiode circuit

pin energy-band diagram

n-type material is doped so lightly that it can be considered intrinsic To make a low resistance contact a highly doped ntype (n+ ) layer is added Front illuminated PIN photodiode operates in the 0.8 to 0.9m band To increase detection efficiency antireflection coatings are provided on the Cross-section view of a frontfront surfaces. illuminated sillicon p-i-n photodiode.

Construction

Working
In normal condition, the depletion region is formed by immobile positively charged donor atoms in the n-type semiconductor and immobile negatively charged acceptor atoms in the p-type material. A large reverse bias voltage is applied across the device so that the intrinsic region is fully depleted of charge carriers. When an incident photon has an energy greater than or equal to bandgap energy of the semiconductor material, the photon can give up its energy and excite an electron from the valence band to the conduction band. This process generates free electron-hole pairs which are known as photo carriers since they are photon generated charge carriers.

Working (contd)
The photodetector is normally designed so that these carriers are generated mainly in the depletion region (the depleted intrinsic region) where most of the incident light is absorbed. The high electric field present in the depletion region causes the carriers to separate and be collected across the reverse biased junction and gives rise to current flow in the external circuit. This current flow is known as the photocurrent.

On the average the charge carrriers move a distance Ln or Lp for electrons and holes respectively. This distance is known as diffusion length. The time it takes for an electron or hole to recombine is known as carrier lifetime and is represented by Tn and Tp respectively. L = (D T )1/2 and L = (D T )1/2 where D and D

PIN photodiode showing the combined absorption and depletion region

Working (contd)
A particular semiconductor material canonly be used over a limited wavelength range.

Photodetectors
Note: the absorption of photons occurs over a distance that is dependant on wavelength. Remembering that the distribution of the field is not uniform tells us that determining the time dependence of the photocurrent signal is difficult. The resultant photocurrent is a result of electron flow only not hole migration. Integrating the hole current to calculate the Q charge will show that the total photogenerated electrons is eN (electrons) and not2eN (electrons and holes).