[sci.electronics] High Speed LED

berryh@udel.EDU (John Berryhill) (04/24/89)

Can someone out there tell me the speed of the fastest AlGaAs/GaAs
IR LED that is commercially available.  I've got plenty of references
to laboratory devices approaching 1 GHz, but I'd like to know who
makes the fastest commercial device and how fast it goes.  I'm
only interested in LED's, not lasers.

Thank you.

							       John Berryhill
					   143 King William  Newark, DE 19711

rpw3@amdcad.AMD.COM (Rob Warnock) (04/25/89)

In article <13865@louie.udel.EDU> berryh@udel.EDU (John Berryhill) writes:
+---------------
| Can someone out there tell me the speed of the fastest AlGaAs/GaAs
| IR LED that is commercially available.  I've got plenty of references
| to laboratory devices approaching 1 GHz, but I'd like to know who
| makes the fastest commercial device and how fast it goes.  I'm
| only interested in LED's, not lasers.  | Thank you.
+---------------

Well, I don't know about "fastest", but some rather inexpensive (by
comparison to the market) plastic-packaged 820 nm LEDs from H-P will
do *at least* 150 Mb/s...  Is that fast enough?

Note: The problem is usually not the LED itself, but the driver circuit.
H-P's app note "AB-78" shows several ways to drive a LED at 150 Mb/s.


Rob Warnock
Systems Architecture Consultant

UUCP:	  {amdcad,fortune,sun}!redwood!rpw3
DDD:	  (415)572-2607
USPS:	  627 26th Ave, San Mateo, CA  94403