PHYSICS
PRESENTATION
PHOTO DIODE
What's a Photodiode
● A photodiode is a light-sensitive semiconductor diode.
● It converts light energy into electrical energy(voltage or current)
● Photodiode is a type of semiconducting device with PN junction.
● A photodiode detects the brightness of sunlight falling over it by
reverse bias i.e., the p – side of the photodiode is connected with
negative terminal of battery (or the power supply) and n – side to the
positive terminal of battery.
● A typical photodiode is made using Silicon, Germanium, Indium
Gallium Arsenide Phosphide or Indium gallium arsenide.
It’s Components
● Internally, a photodiode has optical filters, built in lens and a
surface area. When surface area of photodiode increases, it
results in less response time. Few photo diodes will look like
Light Emitting Diode (LED). It has two terminals as shown
below. The smaller terminal acts as cathode and longer
terminal acts as anode.
● The symbol of the photodiode is similar to that of an LED but
the arrows point inwards as opposed to outwards in the LED.
Working of a Photodiode
● When light is illuminated over a PN junction
diode the covalent bonds present in it are
ionized This generates electron and hole pairs
which in turn produce Photocurrents
● The photon absorption intensity and photon
energy are directly proportional to each other.
● Intrinsic Excitations and Extrinsic Excitations
are the two methods via which the photon
excitation happens. The process of intrinsic
excitation happens, when an electron in the
valence band is excited by photon to
conduction band.
Modes of operation of a Photodiode
Photodiode operates in three different modes. They are:
● Photovoltaic Mode
● Photoconductive Mode
● Avalanche Diode Mode
Photovoltaic Mode
This is otherwise called as Zero Bias
Mode. When a photodiode operates in
low frequency applications and ultra-level
light applications, this mode is preferred.
When photodiode is irradiated by a flash
of light, voltage is produced. The voltage
produced will have a very small dynamic
range and it has a non-linear
characteristic. When photodiode is
configured with OP-AMP in this mode,
there will be a very less variation with
temperature.
Photoconductive Mode
In this mode, photodiode will act in reverse biased
condition. the reverse voltage increases, the width
of the depletion layer also increases. Due to this the
response time and junction capacitance will be
reduced. Comparatively this mode of operation is
fast and produces electronic noise
Transimpedance amplifiers are used as
preamplifiers for photodiodes. Modes of Such
amplifiers keep the voltage maintains to be constant
to make photo diode operate in the photoconductive
mode
Avalanche Diode Mode
In this mode, Avalanche Diode
operates at a high reverse bias
condition. It allows multiplication
of an Avalanche Breakdown to
each photo-produced electron-
hole pair. Hence, this produces
internal gain within photodiode.
The internal gain increases the
device response.
V-I Characteristics of Photodiode
Photodiode operates in reverse bias condition.
Reverse voltages are plotted along X axis in volts
and reverse current are plotted along Y-axis in
microampere. Reverse current does not depend
on reverse voltage. When there is no light
illumination, reverse current will be almost zero.
The minimum amount of current present is called
as Dark Current. Once when the light illumination
increases, reverse current also increases linearly
Applications of Photodiode
● Photodiodes are also used in safety electronics like fire and
smoke detectors. It is also used in TV units
● When utilized in cameras, they act as photo sensors. It is used
in scintillators charge-coupled devices, photoconductors, and
photomultiplier tubes
● Photodiodes are also widely used in numerous medical
applications like instruments to analyze samples, detectors for
computed tomography and also used in blood gas monitors.
