Light Source Position Sensor using a Lateral Photodiode

J. M. Quero, A. Guerrero and L.G. Franquelo

Dpto. Ingeniera Electrnica E.S. Ingenieros, Avda. Camino de los Descubrimientos s/n, Sevilla-41092 (SPAIN) Tel: +34 95 448 73 66 FAX: +34 95 448 73 73 e-mail: quero@esi.us.es

Abstract
There exist industrial applications where an accurate estimation of a light source position is needed. That is the case of a heliostat, a device that projects sun light upon a focus hundreds of meters far away. In this paper a novel sensor design to generate an alignment sensor signal is presented. A detail study of its response is included, showing that there exist several design parameters to achieve a desired accuracy. The most outstanding feature of this sensor is that it can be easily implemented using microsystems technology. A design using Sensonor technology is included.

3.

Positioning of the mirror using two high precision encoders in each axis.

1. Introduction
In industry, there exist some applications where an accurate estimation of the position of a light source is needed. That is the case of heliostats in solar concentrating power plants. This device consist of a large mirror that can be rotated respect to a vertical and horizontal axes, named azimuth and elevation axes, as it is shown in Fig. 1. The sunlight is projected upon a focus that is hundreds of meters far from the mirror. As a maximum projection error of one quarter of meter is permitted, a maximum positioning angle error of one miliradian must be achieved. Therefore an accurate control scheme is needed to guarantee a correct positioning of the reflected ray in the target. Up to now, the most common method to determine the position of the mirror is as follows: 1. Determination of the sun position. There exist a set of equations proposed by Michalsky [1] that estimates the sun position using a time argument that is the difference in days between the current Julian date. 2. Calculus of the exact mirror position according to the absolute sun position and the relative position of the heliostat respect to the focus.

This control scheme has several drawbacks: 1. It is an open loopback control, because no feedback signal of the reflected ray is used. There is no guarantee that the sunlight is in the desired location in the focus. 2. Some corrections considering local parameters, such us local co-ordinates or atmospheric pressure and temperature must be taken. 3. The use of encoders with more than 2000 pulses per turn and a mechanical reduction is an expensive solution because there are more than one thousand heliostats in such a power plant, and its number is a multiplier factor in the entire cost of the plant. 4. The controller must be personalised for each heliostat and must be programmed with its relative position to the focus. Although the use of this algorithm is currently being applied, the previous objections make this approach inefficient. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel sensor to obtain an accurate error signal from the reflected ray direction to lower the manufacturing and installation costs of the heliostat. This paper is organised as follows. In Section 2 we describe the structure of the sensor and its application to a heliostat. A detailed study of the sensor response is also included. In Section 3 we then describe a sensor design using Sensonor microsystem manufacturing technology. Finally we summarise our major findings and outline our future work.

2. Sensor description
The sensor is composed by a lateral photodiode that it is covered, and only a light ray coming from an aperture illuminates a small area. This structure can be seen in Fig. 2. Light entering a semiconductor material produces an electrical current by releasing hole-electron pairs. The top electrode separates into two segments that lie at opposite sides of the diode chip. The carriers collected there must first travel laterally through the resistance of the semiconductor material to reach the diodes contacts. This resistance provides the current divider action to produce a linear position indication. Finally, it is easy to obtain a relationship between the measured currents and the angle of the incident ray, as we will see later, simply taking into account the geometry of aperture in the cover, that is, the size of the aperture and its distance to the photodiode. There exist several schemes that compare the total amount of incident light in two cells. In our proposed sensor, the projection of the shadow of the cover upon the sensor provides the error signal. As it will be demonstrated later, the distance from the hole to the lateral photodiode relative to its length is a parameter that geometrically amplifies the error signal. Obviously, the proposed sensor can measure the angle of the ray in one plane. It is necessary to arrange two devices perpendicularly disposed to provide 3D positioning. In order to have a close loop feedback control, the use of the proposed sensor to analyse the reflected ray is suggested, at it is shown in Fig. 3. The sensor is initially adjusted using a laser ray coming from the focus. The sensor is rotated in both axes to achieve zero differential currents in the sensors. Using this procedure we eliminate any geometry deviation generated during the manufacturing or the installation of the sensor. From the sensor point of view, a rotation of the mirror is seen as a displacement of the mirrored sun. The error signal generated by the sensor can be used to rotate the mirror to align the sun respect to the focus.

Fig. 1. Photograph of a heliostat.

Fig. 2. Structure of the sensor.

2.2. The Photodiode Current The calculus of the current generated by the photovoltaic effect has been widely studied in literature. The basic parameter that expresses the resulting efficiency of a photodiode is the spectral response SR, that it is defined as the number of carriers to the number of incident photon ratio:

SR =

J L ( ) qN F ( )(1 R)

(1)

Fig. 3. Application scheme of the sensor controlling a heliostat.

where coefficient R represents the photon reflection on the semiconductor surface. The carrier generation is the contribution carriers generated in the three semiconductor regions of the photodiode:

2.1. The Photodiode Model The current generation in the lateral photodiode can be studied as the general case of current generation in a p-n junction inversely polarised. In this situation, the lateral photodiode [2] is in the photoconductive zone, and its equivalent circuit is represented in Fig. 4.

These parameters can be obtained [3] integrating the continuity equation to obtain the minority carrier concentrations in each region. The resulting values are as follows: - For the n region:

For the depletion region:

- For the p region:

Fig. 4. Equivalent circuit of the sensor.

In this model the current source ip represents the photodiode signal, and the diode replicates voltage conditions for the forward-biased state. Resistance RD represents the diodes dark resistance, with a relative large value, and its effect can be ignored. Under the assumption that only steady state is studied, the photodiode capacitance Cd effect can be neglected. R1 and R2 resistances represent the series resistance of the semiconductor material, and are responsible for the lateral photodiode action. The position of the potentiometer wiper represents the position of the light beam on the photodiode.

The number of incident photons per time unit can be expressed as NF()= G() / h c. Finally, the current generated by the photodiode can be obtained integrating (1) over the light spectrum

(2) where A is the area of the light beam.

Fig. 7. Incident angle of the light ray

Fig. 5. Spectral response components

Let us consider a light beam incident on a horizontal location distant X from the centre of the photodiode with a L length. Let us also assume that semiconductor resistance is uniform. Therefore the resistances between the horizontal location X of the light beam and the right and left electrodes are:

If we consider the photodiodo current IL described by equation (2), the terminal currents are:

Fig. 6. Current components

The spectral response and current components in the photodiode are depicted in Figs. 5 and 6 respectively, using the following technological parameters: Nd = 5x1018 cm-3 Na = 1016 cm-3 Wn = 0.5 m Wp = 250 m

2.3. The Current Divider The current generated in the photodiode is divided in two components. In order to determine each value, the geometry of the cover has to be considered (see Fig. 7).

However, these expressions do not take into account the weight of the light beam, that can not been neglected when compared to the distance between electrodes. So, a more realistic approximation can be achieved by integrating the photoelectric effect along this area. In order to obtain a large enough current generation, the aperture will be rectangular, with dimensions La and Wa (see Fig. 8). Thus, the currents in the electrodes can be calculated by the following integral expressions: (3)

According to the static response of the sensor previously determined, the following geometrical parameters have been chosen: H = 2000m L = 100m Wa = 20m La = 1000m

Fig. 8. Effect of the ray weight

Finally, the position X and incident angle can be calculated from the relative values of the previous currents.

Fig. 9. Current increment vs. Incident angle of the light beam

The transfer function of this sensor is drawn in Fig 9 and a detail of the midpoint response is in Fig. 10. Notice that for one miliradian the current difference in the electrodes is 0.16A, providing a sufficient resolution for an accurate angle positioning.

(4) Notice in equation 4 that the sensitivity of the device depends on the ratio between L and H, the total length of the photodiode and the distance from the aperture to the photodiode, respectively. This ratio can be understood as a gain factor in the resolution of the sensor. Using mechatronic techniques, it is easy to design a device with H several orders of magnitude larger than L. In order to guarantee a reasonable amount of photocurrent to be measured, a minimum Wa is necessary. As there is no restriction in La, the length of the aperture, it can be done as long as possible. This way we obtain a large output differential current to prevent the sensor from noise and external interference. Finally, there is a trade-off between the sensitivity of the sensor and the maximum deviation angle that can be measured. On one hand, an increase in L provides a larger range of measure. On the other hand, that increase in L represents a lower gain factor and therefore less accuracy.

Fig. 10. Current difference vs. Incident angle of the light beam (detail)

Another interesting feature of this sensor is that its structure is inherently robust against geometrical defects. For instance, if the aperture and the electrodes in the photodiode are not aligned there exist an equilibrium position where the differential carrier generation is compensated.

3. Sensor Design
Current design and fabrication techniques using microsystems technologies are providing an incomparable framework design. There exist a large amount of optoelectromechanical examples [4]. The cost of a sensor realised with this technology has a low price.

We have chosen Sensonor [5] technology to implement the proposed sensor. Although this technology is mostly employed in acceleration sensor, its manufacturing characteristics allow a practical realisation of the sensor. A scheme of the proposed sensor using this technology is depicted in Fig. 11. Using an anisotropic backside etching of Si, with electromechanical stop on n-p junction we can generate an aperture to leave the photodiode open to light. It is also possible to make a hole in the glass wafer using isotropic wet etching. This way, there exist a almost two wafer widths of distance from the aperture to the photodiode.

4. Conclusions
A novel sensor design to accurately determine the position of a light source has been introduced. This scheme basically consists of a lateral photodiode sensor that receives light from an aperture. A detailed analysis of the sensor has been developed, and it is remarkable that the distance from the aperture to the sensor plays a crucial role in the design, as it can be regarded as a gain factor in the position sensor. As a result, a desired sensibility can be achieved placing the aperture sufficiently far form the photodiode. Other design parameters guarantee robustness against noise and fabrication tolerances. Finally, a novel design using Sensonor technology has been included. The proposed sensor is protected under patent [6]. References
[1] Michalsky J. J. The astronomical almanacs algorithm for approximate solar position (19502050). Solar Energy, Vol. 40, N3, pages 227-235. 1988. [2] Graeme J. Photodiode Amplifiers, McGraw Hill, 1995. [3] Liou J.J., Advanced Semiconductor Device Physics and Modeling. Artech House. 1994. [4] Valette S, Renard S, Jadot P., Gidon P., Erbeia C. Silicon-Based Integrated Optics Technology for Optical Sensor Applications.. Sensor and Actuators. A21-23, pages 1087-1091. 1990 [5] Normic MPW Process Design Hadbook. V 2.0. 1999. [6] Patent number P9901375

Fig. 11. Scheme of the proposed sensor realised using Sensonor technology.