Interactive Learning Material for Optoelectronic Devices using MATLAB-based GUI

Abstract

Optoelectronic devices have been a difficult subject to grasp for many university students who undertake electronic engineering. Many students find it difficult to understand the operation principle of the optoelectronic devices, for instance, how a solar cell device converts solar energy into electric energy or electricity, or the difference between types of semiconductor devices in terms of interaction between photons and electrons. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to design and implement an interactive and animated software package to aid students in understanding the concepts of the following optoelectronic devices: solar cell, p-n junction photodiode, p-i-n photodiode, light emitting diode and semiconductor laser. The software package was designed to be user friendly and easy to use requiring minimum learning time. The implementation of the software package was achieved using the MATLAB program which is an interactive software package for scientific and engineering numeric computation. The outcome is a series of MATLAB programs that can be used to help students learn the concepts of optoelectronic devices.