SOURCES: LED STRUCTURES

Prof. Dr.G. Aarthi

Associate Professor
SENSE,VIT,Vellore
 FIBER OPTIC SOURCES

Two basic light sources are used for fiber optics:

 Laser diodes (LD)
 Light-emitting diodes(LED).
• Fiber optic sources must operate in the low-loss transmission
windows of glass fiber.
• LEDs are typically used at the 850-nm and 1310-nm
transmission wavelengths, whereas lasers are primarily used
at 1310 nm and 1550 nm.
LED Versus Laser
 SEMICONDUCTOR LIGHT-EMITTING
DIODES
Semiconductor LEDs emit incoherent light.
Spontaneous emission of light in
semiconductor LEDs produces light waves
that lack a fixed-phase relationship.
 Light waves that lack a fixed-phase
relationship are referred to as incoherent
light.
 SEMICONDUCTOR LIGHT-EMITTING DIODES Cont…

 The use of LEDs in single mode systems is severely limited

because they emit unfocused incoherent light.

 Even LEDs developed for single mode systems are unable to

launch sufficient optical power into single mode fibers for
many applications.

 LEDs are the preferred optical source for multimode systems

because they can launch sufficient power at a lower cost than
semiconductor LDs.
 Types of LED
 Heterojunction LED
 Planar LED
 Dome LED
 Surface-emitting LED (SLED),
 Edge-emitting LED (ELED), and
 Super luminescent LED (SLD)
 Homo- and Hetro-Junction

 Homojunction = a p-n junction made out of

two differently doped semiconductors that are
of the same material (i.e having the same band
gap).
 Heterojunction = junction formed between
two different band gaps semiconductors.
 Heterostructure device = semiconductor
device structure that has junctions between
different bandgap materials.
 DOUBLE Heterojunction LED
 Consists of a p type GaAs layer sandwiched between a p type AlGaAs and a n
type AlGaAs layer.
 When Forward biasing is applied electrons from the n type layer are injected
through the p-n junction into the p type GaAs layer where they become
minority carriers .
 DOUBLE Heterojunction LED
 These minority carriers diffuse away from the junction, recombining with
majority carriers (holes).
 Photons are produced with energy corresponding to the bandgap energy of
the p type GaAs layer.
 The injected electrons are inhibited from diffusing into the p type AlGaAs
layer because of the potential barrier presented by the p-p heterojunction.
Double Heterojunction LED
 Reabsorption Problem
In order to prevent reabsorption, the upper layer (one that is above
the active region) needs to have higher band gap therefore the
emitted photons will not be absorbed by the upper layer .

1.4eV 2eV

n-AlGaAs p-GaAs p-AlGaAs

Epoxy
Metal contact
n AlGaAs Active region – Photons will
p GaAs (active region) not be absorbed by the n-
p Al GaAs
AlGaAs since the band gap
is much higher than GaAs
n+
GaAs
Metal contact
 Carrier confinement

electrons

holes
n+-AlGaAs p-GaAs p+-AlGaAs

Simplified band diagram of the ‘sandwich’ top show carrier confinement.

Drastically reduce nonradiative recombination at the surface states.
 Double Heterostructure
 Provides good internal quantum efficiency and high radiance
emission.

 The double heterostructure is therefore used to provide the

most efficient incoherent sources for optical fiber
communication.
 Planar LED
 Simplest of the structures that are available.
 Fabricated by either liquid or vapour-phase epitaxial process
over the whole surface of a GaAs substrate.
 Involves a p type diffusion into the n type substrate in order to
create the junction.
 Planar LED
 Forward current flow through the junction gives spontaneous
emission and the device emits light from all surfaces.
 Only a limited amount of light escapes the structure due to
total internal reflection.
 Dome LED
 A hemisphere of n type GaAs is formed around a diffused p
type region.
 The diameter of the dome is chosen to maximize the amount
of internal emission reaching the surface within the critical
angle of the GaAs-air interface.
 Dome LED
 Has a higher external power efficiency than the planar LED.
 Dome must be far larger than the active recombination area,
which gives a greater effective emission area.
Surface Emitting LED
 Surface Emitting LED
 Also called front emitter LED’s.
 Structured to obtain high radiance and efficient coupling of the emitted light into
a fiber.
 It is essentially a double heterostructure device.
 The bottom P- GaAs and top n- GaAs are included for the realization of the low
resistance ohmic contacts.
 To avoid reabsorption of the emitted radiation in the top n-GaAs layer , a deep
well is etched to reach the top n-AlGaAs layer.
 Surface Emitting LED
 Can be done by a selective etchant that etches GaAs but not AlGaAs.
 The well is also used to support the fiber, which is butt-coupled to the device
inorder to accept the emitted light.
 The plane of the active light-emitting region is oriented perpendicularly to the axis
of the fiber.
 The thin SiO2 layer at the back isolates the contact layer from the gold heat sink.
 Photons are generated in the thin p-GaAs region and emission from the top
surface is ensured by the heterostructure and reflection from the back crystal face.
 Surface Emitting LED
 Thus the forward radiance of these devices is very high.

 The fiber is properly aligned to optimize coupling of the emitted radiation.

 But, there is some loss due to the Lambertian distribution of the radiation intensity
and the coupling efficiency is typically 1-2 %.
 Lambertian pattern
 In this pattern the source is LED
LASER
equally bright when viewed
from any direction, but the
power diminishes as cos θ .

 Thus the power is down to 50

percent of its peak when θ=60o,
so that half power beam width
is 120o
 Surface Emitting LED
• The power coupled Pc into a multimode step index fiber may be estimated
from the relationship

• where r is the Fresnel reflection coefficient at the fiber surface,

• A is the smaller of the fiber core cross-section or the emission area of
the source and
• RD is the radiance of the source.
• NA Numerical Aperture
 Surface Emitting LED
 Other lens coupling used to improve the coupling
efficiency are

 Spherical ended fiber-coupled device

 Microlens coupling
 Integrated semiconductor lens structure
 Surface Emitting LED

Spherical ended fiber-coupled device

Figure shows the end of the fiber that is polished into a spherical
lens.
This collects and collimates the divergent radiation from the LED.
 Surface Emitting LED

Microlens coupling

A glass microlens is inserted between the device and the fiber

which collects and collimates the divergent radiation from the LED.
 Surface Emitting LED

Integrated semiconductor lens structure

An integrated structure is obtained by etching and polishing the

top surface layer of the LED into a spherical lens which collects and
collimates the divergent radiation from the LED.
Difficult to implement.
Surface Emitting LED-Applications

Important for large-volume and low cost applications.

Short-distance chip-to-chip communications where
surface-emitting sources are essential.
Optical computing applications.
With the different techniques of lens coupling, coupling
efficiencies of 5%-15% have been achieved.
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.
Guided wave or Edge-emitting LED
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.

The photons are generated in the very thin active region and spread into
the guiding layers, without reabsorption because of their larger bandgaps.
Guided wave or Edge-emitting LED
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.
 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.
Spectral width of LED types
 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 increased temperature
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 .
A DH surface emitter which has an emission area diameter of 50
μm is butt jointed to an 80 μm core step index fiber with a
numerical aperture of 0.15. The device has a radiance of 30 W
sr−1 cm−2 at a constant operating drive current. Estimate the
optical power coupled into the fiber if it is assumed that the
Fresnel reflection coefficient at the index matched fiber surface
is 0.01.
The optical power coupled into the fiber Pc is given by

In this case A represents the emission area of the source. Hence:

Thus:

so around 41 μW of optical power is coupled into the step index fiber