Optoelectronics is the study and application of electronic

Electronics

Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...

 devices that source, detect and control light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

, usually considered a sub-field of photonics

Photonics

The science of photonics includes the generation, emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, detection and sensing of light. The term photonics thereby emphasizes that photons are neither particles nor waves — they are different in that they have both particle...

. In this context, light often includes invisible forms of radiation such as gamma ray

Gamma ray

Gamma radiation, also known as gamma rays or hyphenated as gamma-rays and denoted as γ, is electromagnetic radiation of high frequency . Gamma rays are usually naturally produced on Earth by decay of high energy states in atomic nuclei...

s, X-ray

X-ray

X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...

s, ultraviolet

Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...

 and infrared

Infrared

Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...

, in addition to visible light. Optoelectronic devices are electrical-to-optical or optical-to-electrical transducer

Transducer

A transducer is a device that converts one type of energy to another. Energy types include electrical, mechanical, electromagnetic , chemical, acoustic or thermal energy. While the term transducer commonly implies the use of a sensor/detector, any device which converts energy can be considered a...

s, or instruments that use such devices in their operation.
Electro-optics

Electro-optics

Electro-optics is a branch of technology involving components, devices and systems which operate by modification of the optical properties of a material by an electric field...

is often erroneously used as a synonym, but is in fact a wider branch of physics

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 that deals with all interactions between light and electric field

Electric field

In physics, an electric field surrounds electrically charged particles and time-varying magnetic fields. The electric field depicts the force exerted on other electrically charged objects by the electrically charged particle the field is surrounding...

s, whether or not they form part of an electronic device.

Optoelectronics is based on the quantum mechanical

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

 effects of light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

 on electronic materials, especially semiconductors, sometimes in the presence of electric field

Electric field

In physics, an electric field surrounds electrically charged particles and time-varying magnetic fields. The electric field depicts the force exerted on other electrically charged objects by the electrically charged particle the field is surrounding...

s.

• Photoelectric or photovoltaic effect, used in:
  • photodiode
    Photodiode
    A photodiode is a type of photodetector capable of converting light into either current or voltage, depending upon the mode of operation.The common, traditional solar cell used to generateelectric solar power is a large area photodiode....
    
    s (including solar cell
    Solar cell
    A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....
    
    s)
  • phototransistors
  • photomultiplier
    Photomultiplier
    Photomultiplier tubes , members of the class of vacuum tubes, and more specifically phototubes, are extremely sensitive detectors of light in the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum...
    
    s
  • integrated optical circuit (IOC) elements
• Photoconductivity
  Photoconductivity
  Photoconductivity is an optical and electrical phenomenon in which a material becomes more electrically conductive due to the absorption of electromagnetic radiation such as visible light, ultraviolet light, infrared light, or gamma radiation....
  
  , used in:
  • photoresistor
    Photoresistor
    A photoresistor or light dependent resistor is a resistor whose resistance decreases with increasing incident light intensity. It can also be referred to as a photoconductor or CdS device, from "cadmium sulfide," which is the material from which the device is made and that actually exhibits the...
    
    s
  • photoconductive camera tubes
  • charge-coupled imaging devices
• Stimulated emission
  Stimulated emission
  In optics, stimulated emission is the process by which an atomic electron interacting with an electromagnetic wave of a certain frequency may drop to a lower energy level, transferring its energy to that field. A photon created in this manner has the same phase, frequency, polarization, and...
  
  , used in:
  • injection laser diode
    Laser diode
    The laser diode is a laser where the active medium is a semiconductor similar to that found in a light-emitting diode. The most common type of laser diode is formed from a p-n junction and powered by injected electric current...
    
    s
  • quantum cascade laser
    Quantum cascade laser
    Quantum cascade lasers are semiconductor lasers that emit in the mid- to far-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and were first demonstrated by Jerome Faist, Federico Capasso, Deborah Sivco, Carlo Sirtori, Albert Hutchinson, and Alfred Cho at Bell Laboratories in 1994.Unlike typical...
    
    s
• Lossev effect, or radiative recombination, used in:
  • light-emitting diode
    Light-emitting diode
    A light-emitting diode is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices and are increasingly used for other lighting...
    
    s or LED
• Photoemissivity, used in
  • photoemissive camera tube

Important applications of optoelectronics include:

• Optocoupler
• Optical fiber
  Optical fiber
  An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...
  
   communications
  Telecommunication
  Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
  
  

See also

• Interconnect bottleneck
  Interconnect bottleneck
  The interconnect bottleneck, the point at which integrated circuits reach their capacity, is expected sometime around 2010.Improved performance of computer systems has been achieved, in large part, by downscaling the IC minimum feature size. This allows the basic IC building block, the transistor,...
  
  
• Non-radiative life time
  Non-radiative life time
  Non-radiative life time is the average time before an electron in the conduction band of a semiconductor recombines with a hole non-radiatively. It is an important parameter in optoelectronics where radiative recombination is required to produce a photon; if the non-radiative life time is shorter...
  
  
• Optical amplifier
  Optical amplifier
  An optical amplifier is a device that amplifies an optical signal directly, without the need to first convert it to an electrical signal. An optical amplifier may be thought of as a laser without an optical cavity, or one in which feedback from the cavity is suppressed...
  
  
• Optical communication
  Optical communication
  Optical communication is any form of telecommunication that uses light as the transmission medium.An optical communication system consists of a transmitter, which encodes a message into an optical signal, a channel, which carries the signal to its destination, and a receiver, which reproduces the...
  
  
• Optical fiber
  Optical fiber
  An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...
  
  
• Optical interconnect
  Optical interconnect
  Optical interconnect is a way of communication by optical cables. Compared to traditional cables, optical wires are capable of a much higher bandwidth, from 10 Gb/s up to 100 Gb/s....
  
  
• Parallel optical interface
  Parallel optical interface
  A parallel optical interface is a form of fiber optic technology aimed primarily at communications and networking over relatively short distances , and at high bandwidths....
  
  
• Photoemission
• Photoemission spectroscopy
  Photoemission spectroscopy
  Photoemission spectroscopy , also known as photoelectron spectroscopy, refers to energy measurement of electrons emitted from solids, gases or liquids by the photoelectric effect, in order to determine the binding energies of electrons in a substance...
  
  
• Photovoltaic effect
  Photovoltaic effect
  The photovoltaic effect is the creation of voltage or electric current in a material upon exposure to light. Though the photovoltaic effect is directly related to the photoelectric effect, they are different processes. In the photoelectric effect, electrons are ejected from a material's surface...
  
  
• Stimulated emission
  Stimulated emission
  In optics, stimulated emission is the process by which an atomic electron interacting with an electromagnetic wave of a certain frequency may drop to a lower energy level, transferring its energy to that field. A photon created in this manner has the same phase, frequency, polarization, and...