Introduction:

Light dependent resistors or in other words photo resistors are very useful especially in light
/dark sensor circuits. They can also be referred to as photoconductors. Normally the resistance of
an LDR is very high, but when they are illuminated with light resistance drops dramatically.
LDRs can have a variety of resistance and functions. For example, it can be used to turn on a
light when the LDR is in darkness or to turn off a light when the LDR is in light. It can also work
the other way around so when the LDR is in light it turns on the circuit and when it’s in darkness
the resistance increase and disrupts the circuit.

Light dependent resistors are a vital component in any electric circuit which is to be turned on
and off automatically according to the level of ambient light - for example, solar powered garden
lights, and night security lighting.

Types of light Dependent Resistors:

 Intrinsic Photo Resistors

 Extrinsic Photo Resistors

Objective:
 The investigation of LDR’s with regard to their operating principles.
 How to use them in a light and temperature sensing circuit.

Apparatus:

 Power Supply
 Oscilloscope
 Voltmeter,
 Amparemeter
 LDR Transistor BC547
 Resistors 100, 270, 1k, 2k 12V
 Bulb (night lamb)

Procedure:
 Connect LDR to the bulb
 Connect the power supply to the circuit
 Switch ON the power supply
 Vary the luminance of the bulb by varying the resistances using the different resistors
 Note the reading at different resistances
Working Principle of LDR:
This resistor works on the principle of photo conductivity. It is nothing but, when the light falls
on its surface, then the material conductivity reduces and also the electrons in the valence band
of the device are excited to the conduction band. These photons in the incident light must have
energy greater than the band gap of the semiconductor material. This makes the electrons to
jump from the valence band to conduction.

These devices depend on the light, when light falls on the LDR then the resistance decreases, and
increases in the dark. When a LDR is kept in the dark place, its resistance is high and, when the
LDR is kept in the light its resistance will decrease.

LDR Structure and Working

The basic structure of an LDR is shown below. The snake like track shown below is the
Cadmium Sulphide (CdS) film which also passes through the sides. On the top and bottom are
metal films which are connected to the terminal leads. It is designed in such a way as to provide
maximum possible contact area with the two metal films. The structure is housed in a clear
plastic or resin case, to provide free access to external light. As explained above, the main
component for the construction of LDR is cadmium sulphide (CdS), which is used as the
photoconductor and contains no or very few electrons when not illuminated. In the absence of
light it is designed to have a high resistance in the range of mega ohms. As soon as light falls on
the sensor, the electrons are liberated and the conductivity of the material increases. When the
light intensity exceeds a certain frequency, the photons absorbed by the semiconductor give band
electrons the energy required to jump into the conduction band. This causes the free electrons or
holes to conduct electricity and thus dropping the resistance dramatically.

Circuit Diagram of a Light Dependent Resistor:

The circuit diagram of a LDR is shown below. When the light intensity is low, then the
resistance of the LDR is high. This stops the current flow to the base terminal of the transistor.
So, the LED does not light. However, when the light intensity onto the LDR is high, then the
resistance of the LDR is low. So current flows onto the base of the first transistor and then the
second transistor. Consequently the LED lights. Here, a preset resistor is used to turn up or down
to increase or decrease the resistance.

Advantages:

 LDR’s are cheap and are readily available in many sizes and shapes.
  Practical LDRs are available in a variety of sizes and package styles, the most popular
size having a face diameter of roughly 10 mm.
 They need very small power and voltage for its operation.

Disadvantages:

 Highly inaccurate with a response time of about tens or hundreds of milliseconds.

Applications:
 Automatic Street Light Circuit.
 Simple Fire Alarm Circuit.
 Light Activated Switch Circuit.
 Automatic LED Emergency Light.
 Night Security Light.
 Automatic Street Light
 Detect Day or Night
 Automatic Head Light Dimmer
 Position sensor
 Used along with LED as obstacle detector
 Automatic bedroom Lights
 Automatic Rear view mirror

LDR Features

 Can be used to sense Light

 Easy to use on Breadboard or Perf Board
 Easy to use with Microcontrollers or even with normal Digital/Analog IC
 Small, cheap and easily available

How to use a LDR sensor:

As said earlier a LDR is one of the different types of resistors, hence using it is very easy. There
are many ways and different circuit in which an LDR can be used. For instance it can be used
with Microcontroller Development platforms like Arduino, PIC or even normal Analog IC’s like
Op-amps. But, here we will use a very simple circuit like a potential divider so that it can be
adapted for most of the projects.

A potential Divider is a circuit which has two resistors in series. A constant voltage will be
applied across the both the resistor and the output voltage will be measured from the lower
resistor. In our case, the lower resistor will be a LDR and the constant voltage will be +5V. The
set-up is shown below: