Heterostructures & Optoelectronic Devices Light generation in semiconductor Light emission diode (LED) Semiconductor laser Heterojunction transistors Photo-detector
Compound Semiconductor Device Market
Light Emission in Semiconductors electron conduction band - h Band gap Electron-hole recombination + valence band hole Si: Eg = 1.1 eV GaAs: Eg = 1.4 eV, = 880 nm AlAs: Eg = 2.2 eV, = 565 nm Si: indirect bandgap, ineffective GaAs: direct bandgap, effective
Electron-Hole Recombination and photon Energy If the electron-hole recombination occurs not at the minimum gap point, the emitted photon can have a higher energy. When the recombination involves an impurity state in the gap, lower-energy photon is generated. h > Eg
Light Emission Diode More efficient Simple PN Junction LED heterojunction LED Simple PN Junction LED
Lattice Matching in Heteroepitaxy
Semiconductor Laser Lateral confinement by proper electrode design
Heterojunction and HEMT Band Offset High electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) with electron gas from the heavily-doped AlGaAs layer moving in the undoped GaAs channel
Quantum Well and Superlattice Bound states in quantum well to mini-band in superlattice Strained superlattice Adjustable bandgap
III-V Nitride Optoelectronic Devices (see: S.C. Jain et al., J. Appl. Phys. 87 (2000) 965)
III-V Nitride Optoelectronic Devices GaN on sapphire with an AlN buffer layer GaN-InGaN DH LED
Large-scale application of LED
Photo-detector E h Reverse biased! Simple detector: conductivity electron conduction band - h Band gap Reverse biased! Electron-hole generation + valence band hole Si: Eg = 1.1 eV, c= 1130 nm Simple detector: conductivity increase of semiconductor when illuminated. P-I-N photo-detector: low dark current, quick response.