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The Light Emitting

Diode
➢ The basic LED is a p-n junction that is forward
biased to inject electrons and holes into the p- and
n-sides respectively.
➢ The injected minority charge recombines with the
majority charge in the depletion region or the
neutral region.

Light Emitting Diode:

kT  26 meV, equivalent to   300-400 Å

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Emission Energy:
The light emitted from the device is very close to the semiconductor bandgap.
One has to choose an alloy since there is greater flexibility in the band gap
range available. As can be seen from Fig. 6.1, the loss is less at 1.55 m and 1.3
m. If optical communication sources are desired, one must choose materials
which can emit at that wavelengths.

Fig. 6.1: The Optical

aatteneuation vs. wqavelength for
an optical fiber. Primary loss
mechanisms are identified as
absorption and scattering.

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Fig. 6.2: Bandgap of AlxGa(1-x)As and (b) GaAs(1-x)Px as a function of alloy

composition. Note that the bandgap changes from direct to indirect as
shown.

Operation of LED:

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discussed earlier

Electron diffusion current density

p-type n-type

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Photon energy and electron and the electron and hole energies are related by

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Heterojunction LED:

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Edge emitting diode

Schematic of
edge emitting
diode.

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Surface emitting diode:

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Light Current characteristics:

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Spectral Purity of LEDs.

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Typical LED device and chip configurations

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The Laser Diode

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The Laser Diode:

The key drawbacks of the LED are the broad spectrum of the emitted light and the
difficulty in pushing the modulation bandwidths above a gigahertz. The laser diode is
able to overcome these limitations. The semiconductor laser diode provides an extremely
sharp emission line with linewidth up to orders of magnitude narrower than that of an
LED. The modulation bandwidth of laser diode approaches 50GHz. And also for its
superior spatial coherence the laser beam does not spread as much as beam from other
sources.

Scematic diagram of how the LED

performance can be improved by
exploiting an optical cavity

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Previously

7.1

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7.1

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OPTICAL CAVITY:

7.2

7.2

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Fig. 7.2: A typical laser

structure showing cavity
amd the mirrors used to
confine the photons.

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Optical aborption loss and gain:

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For a given injection density n(=p) the position of quassi fermi level is given by

7.3

7.4

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Fig. 7.3: Gain vs. photon energy curves for a variety of carrier injections for
GaAs at 300K. The electron and hole injections are the same. The injected
carrier densities are increased in steps of 0.25x10 18 cm-3 from the lowest value.

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7.4

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The Laser below and above threshold:

The light output from a laser diode displays a rather abrupt change in behaviour below
the thresold condition and above this condition. The thresold condition is usually
defined as the condition where the cavity loss for any photon energy when,

>0

7.5

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7.5

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7.6

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The current density is

Low threshold current:

Threshold current density is directly proportional to the thickness of the active

region. If d is low, the threshold current density is low.

But, low d means a lower confinement factor, which means a lower output
intensity.

Conventional device d ~1 um
But, in QW laser, d ~ 10 nm.

The threshold current density in QW laser is as low as 100 A/cm 2. That means, a
laser cavity of 10 um x 200 um can be turned on by a current of 2 mA.
Strained quantum well laser can have 3 times lower threshold current, due
to lower hole mass.

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Modal Purity of Emission :

Fabry Perot cavity modal purity is not so good, as multiple modes can come out.

2𝜋 𝑣
k = , ∆𝜔 = , 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑣 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡.
𝐿 𝐿

Use diffraction grating to improve the purity of laser light. If a periodic grating
is incorporated in the laser cavity, only those photons satisfying the relation:
=2d, where d is the periodicity, will build up and eventually participate in
stimulated emission.
This concept is called distributed feedback (DFB) laser.

The spectrum purity of the Fabry-Perot cavity is ~30 A (as compared to a

width of 200-300 A for an LED).

But DFB laser can produce an output with a spectral width of only 3-5 A.
This is important for long-distance communication.

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Time response of a Laser:

Large signal response and

Small signal response

Large signal response is typically in 10-20 ns for the light to comeout,

Small signal response refers to response above threshold current.

J(t) = J0 + Js sin wt , where J0 > Jth

Photon lifetime ~ a few picosecond

E-h recombination time in Stimulated emission is also very low.
Modulation frequency is 20-30 GHz

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