DIODE IV CHARACTERISTICS
Villars, Joshua
Abstract
A LabVIEW test fixture is developed for automatic evaluation of the small signal
impedance of red, green, yellow, and blue LEDs.
Introduction
As is well known, the IV characteristics of common LEDs depends upon the color. This
interface in LabVIEW automatically measures and displays the IV characteristics of these LEDs,
and computes for display the small signal impedance dV/dI of these devices.
Color
Wavelength [nm]
Infrared
> 760
V < 1.63
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Semiconductor material
Gallium arsenide (GaAs)
Aluminium gallium arsenide (AlGaAs)
Aluminium gallium arsenide (AlGaAs)
Gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP)
Gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP)
Aluminium gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP)
Gallium(III) phosphide (GaP)
Gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP)
Aluminium gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP)
Gallium(III) phosphide (GaP)
Traditional green:
Gallium(III) phosphide (GaP)
Aluminium gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP)
Aluminium gallium phosphide (AlGaP)
Pure green:
Indium gallium nitride (InGaN) / Gallium(III)
nitride (GaN)
Blue
Violet
Purple
Multiple types
Ultraviolet
< 400
Pink
Multiple types
V ~ 3.3[76]
White
Broad spectrum
V = 3.5
Procedure
1. Connect a power supply providing 25 Volts to a resistor. On the remaining end, connect a
light emitting diode (LED), which is connected to a grounding wire.
2. To use the provided LabVIEW program, connect a wire in between the resistor and LED
for the digital multimeter.
3. Using the provided LabVIEW program, Diode IV curves, sweep the voltage from 0 to
25 volts, and note when the LED begins to emit light, and how the diode behaves once it
passes that threshold.
Apparatus
In this apparatus, the red wire pictured farthest left is providing the current to the resistor.
It flows through the resistor, the second red wire between the resistor and LED delivers the flow
to the digital multimeter, and the flow continues through the LED, and then into the grounding
wire.
Results
Four different color light emitting diodes were used: Blue, Green, Red and Yellow.
Blue
Green
Red
Yellow
The voltages in this table are the voltage drops when the diode light first activated.
Full page views of collected and plotted data begins on the following page.
1. Blue LED
2. Green LED
3. Red LED
4. Yellow LED
Conclusion
In this lab, we concluded that our experimental results of the voltage drop of different
color LEDs did coincide with the theoretical voltage drops of the LEDs of different wavelengths.