Fabrication and characterization of an AlGaN light emitting diode with Al-doped ZnO as a current spreading tunnel junction layer

Abstract

We fabricated an AlGaN light emitting diode (LED) with a heavily Al-doped n-type ZnO layer on a p-type contact layer as a tunnel junction (TJ) to improve carrier injection into the LED. We characterized its electrical and optical properties and compared them to those of an AlGaN LED without ZnO. From the I–V characteristic of the LED with ZnO, we observed a threshold voltage of circa 2 V, which could be due to Zener breakdown of the type II heterostructure of n-ZnO/p-GaN as a TJ. From the electroluminescence measurement, we observed a similar emission peak in both AlGaN LEDs at ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths, but a broad emission band around 365 nm in the LED with ZnO. This emission could be originating from ZnO photoexcited by the UV LED emission. The dependence of these peak intensities on input currents shows that there is a monotonic increase in the light emission intensity for the UV LED emission, but a saturation behavior after the threshold voltage for the emission from the ZnO. This saturation behavior is attributed to an overflow of photoexcited electron–hole pairs into p-GaN, strongly suggesting that n-ZnO/p-GaN works as a TJ. Electroluminescence data also show that the presence of the ZnO film facilitates current spreading, which enables device operation at large input currents. Therefore, ZnO can work as a current spreading TJ layer and improve the performance of the AlGaN LED.