Mymensingh Engineering College: An Assignment On Optoelectronics EEE - 809
Mymensingh Engineering College: An Assignment On Optoelectronics EEE - 809
Mymensingh Engineering College: An Assignment On Optoelectronics EEE - 809
(University of Dhaka)
An Assignment on Optoelectronics
EEE - 809
1. What is LED?
A light emitting diode (LED) is essentially a PN junction opto-
semiconductor that emits a monochromatic (single color) light when
operated in a forward biased direction. LEDs convert electrical energy
into light energy.
Advantages:
i. Energy efficient (produce more light per watt)
ii. Long lifetime (60,000 Hours or more)
iii. Rugged(made-up of solid material, no breakage like filament)
iv. No warm-up period(achieve full bright light in nanoseconds)
v. Not effected by cold temperature(used in sub zero weather)
vi. Directional(direct the light where you want)
vii. Environment Friendly(contains no mercury)
viii. Controllable(brightness and color can be controlled)
ix. Can sustain over frequent on-off cycle
Disadvantages:
i. Very expensive than other lighting technologies
ii. Requires accurate voltage & constant current flow
iii. Can shift color due to age & temperature
iv. Cannot be used in high temperature (Lead to device failure)
Applications:
i. Vehicle indicator lights and brake lights.
ii. Currently Audi & BMW integrate high power LEDs.
iii. Mobile phone flash lights. (Surface Mount Diode)
iv. LED screens for advertising & information.
v. Due to low power consumption, small size & long life
vi. LEDs are used in many electrical equipment. (indicator)
vii. Now a days airports, hotels, subways, shopping centers and some
homes feature LEDs.
viii. LED based traffic signal has been successful & is alsogrowing
rapidly.
4. History of LED?
Since the discovery of the light emitting diode (LED) in the early 1900s,
it is one the oldest and simplest optoelectronic devices which have found
tremendous scientific and industrial applications in display systems,
optical communication networks, sensors, logic devices, tail light in
automobiles and many more. LEDs along with lasers are basically
electroluminescence type of devices, where light emission supported by
generation of excess carriers by electric field or current injection into the
devices. From the mid-1950s, the entire effort on designing efficient
LEDs rests on alloy materials of III-V (like GaAs, GaP, GaN, AlGaAs,
GaAsP, GaInP, GaInP, AlGaInP, etc.) and II-VI (like ZnS, ZnTe etc.)
semiconductors. These materials, being direct bandgap by nature, support
primarily radiative light emission, and hence ensure higher efficiency.
Moreover, the light emission from these binary, ternary or quaternary
semiconducting materials covers a wide range of light starting from
infrared (IR) to visible (white light or single color light such as green blue,
red, yellow, etc.) as well as ultra violet (UV) region. Nowadays, with the
advent of modern semiconductor growth techniques like molecular beam
epitaxy (MBE), metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), etc.
along with bandgap engineering using compound semiconductors, it is
possible to fabricate various solid-state light sources including LEDs and
lasers which are active in visible, UV and IR region of the spectrum.
Loss Minimization:
To minimize the loss of photon due to reabsorption process (first
category), the top p- layer of LED is made thin that prevents the traveling
of the emitted photons to the long distance of its exposed planer layer. The
second and third types of loss mechanism can be minimized by using
dome-shaped LED.