ECE 672 - Winter 2017

ECE 672 - Optoelectronic Devices

Instructor

Dayan Ban, QNC 4603, extension 37467, email: dban@uwaterloo.ca

Lectures

8:30-11:20 am Monday

Office hour

To be determined.

Course outline

  • Basic concepts and overview – optical properties of semiconductors, electromagnetic spectrum, elements of plane wave propagation, elements of solid state physics.
  • Basic semiconductor electronics – Maxwell’s equations and boundary conditions, semiconductor electronics equations, generation and recombination in semiconductors, semiconductor p-n heterojunctions.
  • Basic quantum mechanics – Schrödinger equation, the square well, the harmonic oscillator.
  • Electronic band structures in semiconductors – The Bloch Theorem and the k·p method for simple bands, The effective mass theory for a single band and degenerate bands, Kronig-Penney Model for a superlattice, band structures of semiconductor quantum wells.
  • Optical waveguide theory – symmetric dielectric slab waveguides, asymmetric dielectric slab waveguides, wave guidance in a lossy or gain medium.
  • Optical processes in semiconductors – optical transitions using Fermi’s golden rule, spontaneous and stimulated emissions, population inversion, interband absorption and gain, intersubband absorption.
  • Semiconductor lasers – carrier and optical confinement in heterostructures, double heterojunction semiconductor lasers, gain-guided and index-guided semiconductor lasers, quantum-well lasers, distributed feedback lasers, surface-emitting lasers.
  • Photodetectors – photoconductors, p-n junction photodiodes, p-i-n photodiodes, avalance photodiodes.
  • Intersubband transition – intersubband quantum-well photodetectors, selection rule, quantum cascade lasers.

Prerequisites

ECE231, ECE209, ECE471 and ECE477, or equivalent.

Text

Lecture notes

Reference books

  • Shun Lien Chuang, Physics of Photonic Devices, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2nd edition, 2009.
  • J. Wilson, J. F. B. Hawkes, Optoelectronics: An Introduction, Prentice-Hall International Inc., 1983. (QC673 W54)
  • Endel Uiga, Optoelectronics, Prentice Hall International Inc., 1995. (TA 1750 U35)
  • G. P. Agrawal, N. K. Dutta, Semiconductor Lasers, 2nd ed., Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993.
  • G. H. B. Thompson, Physics of Semiconductor Laser Devices, John Wiley & Sons, 1980. (TA 1700, T45)
  • H. Schneider and H. C. Liu, Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors: Physics and Applications, Sringer, 2006 (ISBN-10:3-540-36323-8)

Grading

5 Assignments (15%), Course Project 35%, Final exam 50%