LED STRUCTURES

GUIDED WAVE OR EDGE-EMITTING LED

GUIDED WAVE OR EDGE-EMITTING LED

In optical communication where tight coupling of the emitted light to a

fiber or waveguide is required, a more collimated light emission is
desirable.

The active layer is usually lightly doped or undoped and a very large
population of carriers for recombination is created in this region by
forward- bias injection.

The two InGaAsP layers on both sides serve as carrier confinement

layers.

The outside InP layers serve as the cladding layers.

This structure forms a waveguide channel that directs the optical

radiation toward the fiber core.

Thus the wide bandgap layers serve the dual purpose of optical
and carrier confinement.
GUIDED WAVE OR EDGE-EMITTING LED
The photons are generated in the very thin active region and spread
into the guiding layers, without reabsorption because of their larger
bandgaps.

The stripe geometry , made by selective metallization on the top

surface
improves the injection efficiency.

Most of the light is made to come out of one edge of the structure, by
putting an reflective coating at the nonemitting end and an
antireflective coating at the emitting end.

The emission pattern of the edge emitter is more directional than

the surface emitter.

In the plane

parallel to the junction , HPBW=120 o.
perpendicular to the junction , HPBW=30 o.
EDGE-EMITTING LED
 DOUBLE-HETEROJUNCTION (DH) LED
--- EDGE-EMITTING TYPE

 Carrier and optical confinement

 In an edge-emitting LED, the wide gap
cladding layers confine not only the
electrons and holes to the active layer,
but also cause the emitted photons to
travel along the LED axis and emerge
from from the edge of the device

 Improved coupling efficiency

 Due to the superior collimation of the
edge-emitting LED (~30o width
perpendicular to the layer and ~120o
parallel to the layer), the coupling
efficiency to a fiber is greatly improved.

The larger operating current

density in a smaller structure can
cause heat-
sinking problems.
LED PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCES (1)
 LED performance differences help link designers to decide
which
device is appropriate for the intended application.

 For short-distance (0 to 3 km), low-data-rate fiber optic

systems, SLEDs are the preferred optical source.

 Typically, SLEDs operate efficiently for bit rates up to 250

megabits per second (Mb/s).

 Because SLEDs emit light over a wide area (wide far-field angle),
they are almost exclusively used in multimode systems.
LED PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCES (2)
 For medium-distance, medium-data-rate systems, ELEDs
are
preferred.

 ELEDs may be modulated at rates up to 400 Mb/s. ELEDs

may be used for both single mode and multimode fiber
systems.

 Both SLDs and ELEDs are used in long-distance, high-data-rate

systems when they are designed to operate in
the superluminescence mode.

 SLDs may be modulated at bit rates of over 400 Mb/s.

SUPERLUMINESCENT LED’S
 Another device geometry which is providing significant benefits over
both SLEDs and ELEDs for communication applications is the
superluminescent diode or SLD.

 This device type offers advantages of:

 (a) a high output power;
 (b) a directional output beam; and
 (c) a narrow spectral linewidth
 all of which prove useful for coupling significant optical power levels
into
optical fiber (in particular to single-mode fiber)
 the superradiant emission process within the SLD tends to increase
the device modulation bandwidth over that of more conventional LEDs.
SUPERLUMINESCENT LED’S
Drawback
 Nonlinear output characteristic and the temperatur
increased e
dependence of the output power .
 It should be noted that the output of the SLD is spectrally broad (i.e. 20
to 150 nm) and therefore when these devices exhibit sufficient
output signal power they can be used as broadband optical power
sources .

 Commercially available SLDs can operate within a broad range

of wavelengths from either 1.16 to 1.33 μm or 1.52 to 1.57 μm .

 In addition, these devices exhibit an output signal power around four

to five times higher than a conventional ELED with optical output power
of 8 mW being reported .
LED EFFICIENCY
External Power Efficiency
• The external power efficiency ηep is defined as the ratio of the optical
power emitted externally Pe to the electric power provided to the device
P

• where Pint is the power generated internally

• F is the transmission factor of the semiconductor–external interface.
• n is the refractive index of outside medium(low)where the optical power
is emitted.
• nx is the refractive index of the LED material.
 A planar LED is fabricated from gallium arsenide which has a refractive
index of 3.6.
(a) Calculate the optical power emitted into air as a percentage of the
internal optical power for the device when the transmission factor at
the crystal–air interface is 0.68.
(b) When the optical power generated internally is 50% of the electric
power supplied, determine the external power efficiency.