Photodiode Operation

A photodiode is a special purpose p-n junction diode with a transparent window that allows light to fall on the diode. When illuminated with photons having energy greater than the semiconductor's band gap, electron-hole pairs are generated in the depletion region.

In this simulation, you can adjust the light intensity and reverse bias voltage to see how they affect electron-hole pair generation and the resulting photocurrent. The photocurrent is proportional to the light intensity.