Undergraduate Optoelectronics Laboratories

This Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement project focuses on providing undergraduates with experience in optoelectronics, an important multidisciplinary technology. An Optoelectronics Laboratory facility has been established at Bucknell University. This enabled the development of laboratory experiments for first-year students and for juniors, seniors, and masters students in an elective course. A laboratory experiment was performed by 215 first year engineering and other interested students in the fall of 1996. This exercise included five inexpensive and transportable modules which provide a hands-on introduction to optoelectronics. In the spring of 1996, students in “Optoelectronic Materials and Devices” performed five new laboratory experiments. These experiments included determining the lattice parameters of semiconductors from X-ray diffraction data, comparing white light sources, gas and semiconductor lasers, and light emitting diodes (LEDs), characterizing materials for detectors and comparing photodetector device structures. The final two experiments focused on fiber optics and were developed by a student as her senior design project. Students coupled light from a HeNe laser into an optical fiber in one lab. In “Creating Optical Communication Links”, students investigated digital and analog modulation using plastic fiber, glass fiber, and free space. Finally, students multiplexed two stereo signals: one using an external modulator and one using a directly modulated LED.