Types of Optoelectronics Devices

Optoelectronics are classified into different types such as

1. Light Emitting Diodes
2. Photodiode/Photo detector
3. Laser Diodes
4. Solar Cells
5. Optical Fiber

1. Light Emitting Diode (LED)

Structure

It is a P-N Junction semiconductor diode. It emits light, when it is forward biased.

p n

+ -
Figure (a) Figure (b)
Free Electrons
------- -------
------- -------
Barrier

Barrier No
+++++ Eg Applied +++++ h
+++++ Voltage +++++

Figure (c) Figure (d)

With Applied Forward Voltage
Figure 1.(a) represents p-n junction & LED with equivalent circuit, (b) Symbol and its band
diagram as shown in Figure (c) and (d)

1.1 The processes involved in LEDs :

The basic process involved in working of LEDs are the following :

a) Process of excitation in which electron-hole pairs are produced.
b) Process of recombination in which the excitation carriers give up their energy, either
through a radiative or a non-radiative process.
c) The last process is the extraction of emitted photons from the active region of the semi-
conductor to the observer.

The overall efficiency of the LED depends on the efficiencies of each of the above three process
and it is found to be the product of the three.

To achieve high radiance and high quantum efficiency, LED must provide a means of confining
the charge carriers and the spontaneous optical emission to the active region of P-N Junction,
where radiative recombination takes place. Carrier confinement is needed to achieve high
quantum efficiency and optical confinement is needed for preventing absorption of the emitted
radiation by material surrounding P-N Junction. To achieve these two confinements LED
 configurations such as double or single hetrojunctions and homojunctions have been widely
used. It is called as double-hetero structure device because of the two different alloy layers on
each side of the active region.

The device shown below consists of P-type GaAs layer sandwiched between a P-type AlGaAs and
a N-type AlGaAs layer. When a forward bias is applied, electrons from N-type are injected through
the P-N Junction into P-type GaAs layer where they become minority carriers. These minority
carriers diffuse away from the junction recombining with majority carriers (holes). Photons are
therefore produced corresponding to the band gap energy of the P-type GaAs layer. The injected
electron does not diffuse into P-type and AlGaAs layer because of the potential barrier presented
by P-P heterojunctions. Hence electroluminesence only occurs in GaAs junction layers, providing
internal quantum efficiency and high radiance emission. The light is emitted from device without
re-absorption because the band gap energy in the AlGaAs layer is large in comparison to GaAs.
(a)
Metal n-type n-type n-type p-type p-type Metal
Contact GaAs Ga1-X Alx As Ga1-y Alx As Ga1-X Alx As GaAs Contact
substrate
Light Guiding Recombina Light Guiding Metal contact
and carrier tion and carrier improvement
confinement Region confinement layer
 1m  0.3m  1m  1m

(b)

Injected  Electron
barrier
Electron

1.51eV h = 820 nm
Energy Electron-hole
Level Recombination
Hole
(C) Refractive index barrier  Injected holes

1 2 3 4 5

Waveguide region

Figure2: (a) Cross-Sectional drawing (not to scale) of a typical GaAlAs double-

heterostructure light emitter. In this structure x > y to provide for both carrier
confinement and optical guiding. (b) Energy-band diagram showing the active
region, and the electron and hole barriers, which confine the charge carriers to
the active layer. (c) Variation in the refractive index.
1.2 DOUBLE HETEROSTRUCTURE LEDS:
In place of the simple p-n junction, a more complicated structure is often used. Typically, this
might be a P-n-N double heterostructure, containing three layers: a p-type layer with a wide
energy gap, a narrow-gap n-type layer, and a wide-gap n-type layer. Now, we have already
mentioned the way in which a single heterojunction may be used to provide potential barriers of
different heights for electrons and holes; the double heterostructure may be used to provide a
high barrier at different positions for electrons and holes. In this way, the recombination region
may be limited to a defined region of space, resulting in an increase in the radiative
recombination efficiency. We illustrate this in Figure 2.1, which shows the energy band diagram
for a P-n-N structure.

Figure2.1: Energy band structure for a P-n-N double heterostructure in equilibrium.

Here the potential barrier faced by electrons is higher at the P-n interface, while that faced by
holes is higher at the n-N interface. Under forward bias, electrons injected into the n-type layer
from the right are prevented from diffusing away to the left by the first of these barriers.
Similarly, holes injected into the n-type layer from the left are stopped from leaking away to the
right by the second barrier. The net effect is that carriers may be poured into the central layer,
which acts as a localized recombination region. Two further advantages stem from this
construction. The first is that the larger band-gaps of the P- and N-type layers can make them
effectively transparent to radiation generated in the narrow-gap recombination region, thus
reducing the amount of light that is absorbed before it escapes from the surface.
The second is that the refractive index of the narrow-gap material at the centre of the structure
may be higher than that of the material on either side. It is therefore possible to combine
localization of the recombination region with confinement of an optical field.

1.3 Types of LED

The two structure of LED being used for fiber optics are

 S-LED (Surface Emitter LED)

 E-LED (Edge-Emitter LED)

Epoxy Metalic Stripe Contact

Metal SiO2

GaAs N
GaAlAs N
Recombination Current
GaAs P Region Distribution

GaAlAs P
P
GaAs
SiO2
Metal
Light Output

(a) Surface Emitter LED (S-LED) Structure. (b) An Edge Emitter LED
Figure 3

In S-LED, the current is confined to a smaller circular region of the surface. The area is typically
20 to 50 m in diameter. Thus the S-LED structure is suitable for coupling to fiber core-diameter
exceeding 100 m and the NA greater than 0.3 (shown in Figure 3 (a) (b)).

But the typical emitting region for E-LED is roughly 8 to 10 m thick and upto 150 m wide. This
type of LED is suitable to enhance optical coupling to 50 m core fiber. The guiding of the optical
power is done by means of different layer in the hetero-junction structure. E-LED is having
additional materials and device-processing. As a result, the E-LED is more expensive to produce
than the S-LED.

2. Optical Detectors (Photodiode/Photo detectors)

2.1 Introduction

As the output end of an optical transmission line there must be a receiving device which
interprets the information contained in the output signal.
The optical receiver has three functions namely

1) Conversion from optical to electrical signal

2) Amplification and
3) Estimation of the message that was originally transmitted.

The first function namely conversion from optical to electrical signal is achieved by using photo
detector along with associated electronic circuit.

A good quality photo detector should have High Quantum efficiency at the appropriate spectral
region. Incoming photons are converted to electrons by the photo detectors. The Quantum
efficiency  is defined as the fraction of incident photons which are absorbed by the photo-
detectors and generate electrons which are collected at the detector terminal. Q varies in
practice. Low signal dependence and sufficient frequency response are the other desirable traits
to be present in a photo detectors. Semi-conductor photodiodes meet all those requirements
remarkably well and is used almost exclusively for fiber optic system because of its small size,
suitable material and high sensitivity and fact response time.

The two types of photodiode used are 1) Pin photodiode 2) Avalanche Photodiode.

2.2 PIN Photodiode

The most common semiconductor photo-detector is the pin photodiode shown in Figure 4. The
device structure consists of P and N regions separated by a very lightly n-doped intrinstric “ I ”
region. In normal operation a sufficiently large reverse bias – voltage is applied across the device
so that the intrinsic region is fully depleted of carriers. A semiconductor photodiode is a reverse
biased P-N Junctions. Photons are absorbed in the semi-conductor and create electron-hole pairs.

Bias Voltage

Photodiode
P i n
Hole Electron
 

h
Photon

Figure 4 :Schematic representation of a pin photodiode circuit with an applied reverse bias &
Symbol
When an incident photon has an energy greater than or equal to the band gap energy of the
semiconductor material, the photon can given 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 photocarriers. Since they are photon generated charge carriers, as shown in Figure 5.
The photodetectors 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.

Photogenerated
Electron
Bandgap Eg p 

ί Conduction Band
Photon 
h  Eg Photogenerated n
Hole
Depletion Valence Band
Region
Figure 5: Simple energy band diagram for a pin photodiode.

The high electric field present in the depletion region cause the carriers to separate and be
collected across the reverse-biased junction. This gives rise to a current flow in an external circuit,
with one electron flowing for every carrier pair generated. This current flow is known as the
photo current. Therefore its efficiency is considerable low because of loss of many carrier pairs
by surface recombination or recombination in the undepleted region. The problem with
photodiode is that the output current is very small to the processed.

So some mechanism that would increase the output current must be used before amplification.
Such a mechanism is used in Avalanche Photodiode (APD).

2.3 Avalanche Photo-Diode (APD)

In the Avalanche Photodiode, an electron-hole pair is created by the absorption of a photon.

Within a high field region, the electron and hole accelerate rapidly in opposite directions creating
pairs. This is a multiplication process. Thus depending upon the reverse bias voltage an initial
primary electron-hole pair may result in tens, hundreds or even more number of secondary pairs.
The result is an effective amplification of the photodiode output current.

The depletion region consists of a high doped, high field gain region followed by a lower field,
low doped absorbing region. It is ensured that the absorbing region is fully depleted well before
the gain region breaks and hence control over the fabrication of the device is needed. These APD
has quantum efficiency nearing 100% and are sufficient for fiber optic communication
application.

One form of APD, a reach-through diode is shown in Figure 6.

e-h Creation
p+  p n+

V
Multiplication
Region

AVALANCHE PHOTO-DIODE
Figure 6

Here n+ and p+ are heavily doped semi-conductors and hence have very low resistances. The 
region is very lightly doped and hence nearly intrinsic. Most of the incident light is absorbed in
this region and electron – hole pairs are generated. The electron moves towards the p-region.
The maximum voltage is dropped across p-n+ junction. Here the multiplication is due to the
electron only. The holes that are generated drift towards the p + and do not take part in the
multiplication process. The RC time constant and the charge carrier transit time range from few
nanosecond to as low as a few tenths of a nanoseconds.

3. Semiconductor Laser Diode

It has the structure just like LED. Figure 7 represents an AlGaAs Laser diode. Charge injection
takes place into the active layer when forward biased and recombination takes place in the active
layer. As a result, spontaneous emission of photons is caused. Some of the injected charges are
stimulated to emit by other photons. A large number of injected charges are available for
stimulated recombination, provided the current density is sufficiently high and optical gain is also
high. The threshold current will be attained when the diode loses are offset by the large gain and
the Laser Oscillation will start at this point. In order to avoid overheating of the semiconductor
(specially for continuous operation and when operating at high peak power) the threshold
current must be small. A low threshold current is attained by confining the injected charges and
light wave to the active layer by hetero-junction in the vertical direction as shown in Figure 7.
 Metalization
GaAs Substrate
n-AlGaAs, Eg = 1.8 eV (Confinement)
1m
0.1 – 0.3m
n-AlGaAs, Eg = 1.55 eV (Active Layer)
1m p-AlGaAs, Eg = 1.83 eV (Confinement)
1m P-GaAs
SiO2 (Insulation)
Strip Control

AlGaAs Laser Metalization

Figure. 7 & Symbol of Laser Diode

The strip contact provides the confinement of charges in the lateral direction. However, the
charges spread only slightly as they move into the recombination center. The output wavelength
is 0.8 m for the Laser diode, as shown in the figure and is determined by the bandgap energy
1.55 eV(Eg) in the active region.

The front and back faces of the semiconductor along parallel crystalline planes are cleaved to
from the laser cavity. The reflection at the AlGaAs – air interface provides sufficient feedback for
oscillation. To increase the reflectance, the end faces are dielectric-coated. From the study of the
slab wave guide it is known that light wave is not entirely confined to the active layer, but an
evanescent tail extends beyond the totally reflecting boundaries, as shown in Figure 8.

Power


Active
Layer

Confinement Confinement
Layer Layer

Figure 8

4. Solar Cells

A solar cell or photo-voltaic cell is an electronic device that directly converts sun’s energy into
electricity. When sunlight falls on a solar cell, it produces both a current and a voltage to produce
electric power. Sunlight, which is composed of photons, radiates from the sun. When photons hit
the silicon atoms of the solar cell, they transfer their energy to lose electrons; and then, these
high-energy electron flow to an external circuit.
 Solar Cells & it’s symbol
The solar cell is composed of two layers which are struck together. The first layer is loaded with
electrons, so these electrons are ready to jump from the first layer to the second layer. The
second layer has some electrons taken away, and therefore, it is ready to take more electrons.
The advantages of solar cells are that, there is no fuel supply and cost problem. These are very
dependable and require little maintenance.
The solar cells are applicable in rural electrification, telecommunication systems, ocean
navigation aids, electric power generation system in space and remote monitoring and control
systems.

Applications of LED
1. LED for Lighting Applications
From the last few years LED lighting systems have become very popular among various
applications, such as street lightings, traffic signals, exit signs displays, etc. All the LED lighting
systems are not the same, but vary with the diverse parameters and configurations. These LED
systems offer tremendous energy, maintenance-free disposition, saves electrical energy and
come with a longer life span. Some of the applications of LED lighting systems are as follows:
 LED in offices
 LED in hospitals
 LED for outdoor spaces
 LED in health care
 LED in industry
2. Display Elements
 LEDs are used in active display, unlike the LCD full-color display, and also in the daytime
programmable displays for advertisements.
 LEDs are used in indicators, such as 7-segment array to generate alpha numerical characters.
 Used in automobile break lights and traffic signals.
3. Communication
 Laser diodes are used in long distance communications.
 LAN (local area network)
4.Opto Isolators
 LED as light emitter provides very high degree of isolation in opto isolators.
In some medical instruments or devices, such as the electrocardiograph amplifiers, during
medical treatment very high degree of isolation is need to ensure patient safety, so these LEDs
do this job perfectly.
 Organic LED
1. Structure of OLED

Fig. 1 The arrangement of layers in a simple OLED.

A simple OLED is made up of six different layers. On the top and bottom there are layers of
protective glass or plastic. The top layer is called the seal and the bottom layer the substrate. In
between those layers, there's a negative terminal (sometimes called the cathode) and a positive
terminal (called the anode). Finally, in between the anode and cathode are two layers made from
organic molecules (Hydrogen & Carbon). The layer next to the cathode is called the emissive
layer where the light is produced and the polymer used in the emissive layer is polyfluorene. The
second layer which is next to the anode is called conductive layer and the polymer used is
polyaniline. OLEDs work in a similar way to conventional diodes and LEDs, but instead of using
layers of n-type and p-type semiconductors, they use organic molecules to produce their
electrons and holes.
That conducting layer provides the "electron holes" that the electrons flowing through layer can
snap into, shedding energy in the process—and an emissive layer where the light is actually
produced. And if you want to produce different colours then it can be done by adding red-, green-
, and blue-tinted plastic layers to the substrate.
2. OLED – Working (Principle of operation)
To make an OLED light up, we simply attach a voltage (potential difference) across the anode and
cathode. The electrons move in the direction from cathode to anode (electrons from the cathode
pass into the emissive layer and holes will pass from anode, which means that anode will retrieve
electrons from the conductive layer). Thus, once the junction is forward-biased, the emissive
layer is negatively charged. However, the conductive layer is positively charged because of
the presence of excess holes that are a positive charge-carriers. The mutual attraction of
electrons and holes in the emissive layer arises due to the occurrence of electrostatic interaction.
Then the recombination phenomenon occurs – connection of a pair of particles with opposite
electrical charges. The energy released during recombination causes the emission of visible
electromagnetic radiation – light. The recombination process happens many times a second
hence, the OLED produces continuous light for as long as the current keeps flowing. We can make
an OLED produce colored light by adding a colored filter into our plastic sandwich just beneath
the glass or plastic top or bottom layer. If we put thousands of red, green, and blue OLEDs next
to one another and switch them on and off independently, they work like the pixels in a
conventional LCD screen, so we can produce complex, hi-resolution colored pictures.
Value of the voltage that supplies OLEDs (the bigger, the brighter means larger OLED power
consumption) defines the brightness of the received light. The color of this light depends on the
type of the organic layer of material used in an emissive layer in the OLED technology. It will be
lit only when the junction is forward-biased (reverse-bias won’t work – just like in typical
semiconductor diode).

3. Types of OLEDs

Six types of OLEDs

a) Passive matrix OLED(PMOLED).
b) Active matrix OLED(AMOLED).
c) Transparent OLED(TOLED).
d) Top emitting OLED.
e) Flexible OLED(FOLED).
f) White OLED(WOLED).

OLED displays can be built in various different ways. In some designs, light is designed to emerge
from the glass seal at the top; others send their light through the substrate at the bottom. Large
displays also differ in the way pixels are built up from individual OLED elements. In some, the red,
green, and blue pixels are arranged side by side; in others, the pixels are stacked on top of one
another so you get more pixels packed into each square centimeter/inch of display and higher
resolution (though the display is correspondingly thicker).

4. Advantages and disadvantages of OLEDs

The use of OLED technology in the construction of any display has both advantages and
disadvantages.

OLED advantages:
1. Flexible displays due to the possibility of applying the organic material on a flexible
substrate.
2. Low weight
3. OLEDS are much thinner (around 0.2–0.3mm or about 8 thousandths of an inch,
compared to LCDs, which are typically at least 10 times thicker)
4. Reduced manufacturing costs due to the lack of backlighting, non-complex construction
(small number of electronic components) and fewer layers of the display
 5. OLEDS are brighter and need no backlight, so they consume much less energy than LCDs
(that translates into longer battery life in portable devices such as cellphones and MP3
players). So low power consumption.
6. Faster response time (~ 0.01ms) compared to LCD technology (2-12ms).Where LCDs are
relatively slow to refresh (often a problem when it comes to fast-moving pictures such as
sports on TV or computer games), OLEDs respond up to 200 times faster.
7. OLEDS produce truer colors (and a true black).
8. Viewing angle is almost unlimited (unlike LCDs, where the colors darken and disappear if
you look to one side).
Being much simpler, OLEDs should eventually be cheaper to make than LCDs (though being
newer and less well-adopted, the technology is currently much more expensive.

OLED disadvantages:

1. OLED displays don't last as long due to degradation of the organic molecules. This meant
that early versions of OLEDs tended to wear out around four times faster than
conventional LCDs or LED displays. The lifespan of organic materials – blue OLED has the
shortest lifetime among the RGB colors (Red, Green, Blue): about 5000-14000h. However,
red and green OLEDs could work between 46,000-230,000h, so blue OLED challenges
today’s world of scientists.
2. Susceptibility to environmental factors – organic materials are particularly sensitive to
environmental factors such as water or humidity. Organic molecules in OLEDs are very
sensitive to water. Though that shouldn't be a problem for domestic products such as TV
sets and home computers, it might present more of a challenge in portable products such
as cellphones.
3. Limited patents – the development of OLED technology is heavily dependent on
companies that have ownership of patents (now Eastman Kodak Company), which require
the payment of license-fees to allow taking any serious, further steps.

5. Applications of OLEDs
1. OLED displays are used in TV, computer screens and MP3 displays.
2. Mobile phones with OLED screens
3. Their thinness, greater brightness, and better color reproduction suggests they might be
used to make inexpensive, animated billboards, or super-thin pages for electronic
books and magazines, Tablet computers with folding displays that neatly transform into
pocket-sized smartphones, or even clothes with constantly changing colors and
patterns wired to visualizer software running from your iPod.

6. OLED VS. LCD:

OLED
Greater view angle.
High contrast
Faster response time
Do not require backlighting
Temperature (~50°C - 80°C)
LCD
Limited view angle.
Low contrast.
Slow response time.
Require backlighting.
Temperature (~0°C –100°C).