OPTO-ELECTRONICS ASSIGNMENT

LIGHT EMITTING DIODES TYPES AND

STRUCTURES

Light Emitting Diode:

A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits incoherent light, through

spontaneous emission, when a current is passed through it. Typically LEDs for the 850-nm
region are fabricated using GaAs and AlGaAs. LEDs for the 1300-nm and 1550-nm regions are
fabricated using InGaAsP and InP.

 Surface-emitting LEDs Structure and Types:

In surface-emitting LED (SLED), the size of the primary active region is limited to a small
circular area of 20 μm to 50 μm in diameter. The active region is the portion of the LED
where photons are emitted. The primary active region is below the surface of the semiconductor
substrate perpendicular to the axis of the fiber.
A well is etched into the substrate to allow direct coupling of the emitted light to the optical
fiber. The etched well allows the optical fiber to come into close contact with the emitting
surface.
In addition, the epoxy resin that binds the optical fiber to the SLED reduces the refractive index
mismatch, increasing coupling efficiency.

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TYPES:
i) Burrus Type:
A variant is the Burrus-type LED, where the active layer can be deeper within the originally
grown semiconductor structure, and a trench etched into the structure allows for more
efficient light extraction. It is also possible to introduce a fiber into the trench in order to
obtain a fiber-coupled LED.
ii) Resonant Cavity Type:
A special type is the resonant-cavity LED (RC-LED), which has the light-emitting
semiconductor junction embedded between two distributed Bragg reflectors (Bragg mirrors),
i.e. in an optical resonator. Due to the moderate Q factor, lasing does not occur, but a larger
directionality is obtained, compared with conventional LEDs. This concept makes it easier to
achieve efficient light extraction and increases the brightnessof the output, from which e.g.
applications in fiber-optic communications can profit. The external quantum efficiency can
easily exceed 20%. The emission bandwidth is smaller than for other LEDs.

 Edge-emitting LEDs Structure and Types:

Edge-emitting LEDs have a structure similar to that of edge-emitting semiconductor lasers:
they are emitting from the edge of a cleaved wafer, where the active region meets the cleaved
surface. Such devices allow more efficient fiber coupling than surface-emitting LEDs. Applied
in optical fiber communications, they allow higher data rates.

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TYPES:
i) Superluminescent Type:
A variant of the edge-emitting LED is the superluminescent diode (SLD), where
the spontaneous emission is substantially amplified within a waveguide. Here, the emission is
much more directional, and as a consequence the brightness is much higher, even for SLDs
with quite low output power.

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