High-luminous efficacy white light-emitting diodes with thin-film flip-chip technology and surface roughening scheme

Abstract

High-luminous efficacy white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) were realized by using GaN-based thin-film (TF) flip-chip (FC) LEDs with phosphor–silicone encapsulation. The TFFC-LEDs were fabricated by electrode isolation, FC configuration, copper electroplating, and laser lift-off (LLO) techniques. During the fabrication process, the high-defect undoped GaN layer was eliminated by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching to lower the absorption loss. Then, the exposed N-face n-GaN surface formed after the ICP etching was systematically studied through control of the temperature, time and concentration of the KOH solution to acquire hexagonal cones with high extraction efficiency. It is found that the external quantum efficiency was improved by a maximum value of 169% for the TFFC-LEDs with optimized surface hexagonal cones compared to TFFC-LEDs with flat surfaces. To further improve the output power, the chip size and n-contact via holes of the TFFC-LEDs were increased. A maximum luminous efficacy of 139 lm W−1 was realized for white LEDs (5700 K, 350 mA, 2.98 V) using these TFFC-LEDs with phosphor–silicone encapsulation. In addition, these white LEDs also have a lower junction temperature of 87 °C even at 700 mA. These results indicate that the proposed TFFC-LEDs are promising for use in automotive and solid-state lighting applications.