Temperature induced carrier transition and its effect on optical intensity of InGaN-based light-emitting diodes

Abstract

We have measured the temperature dependence of two important and distinct features of the InGaN light-emitting diodes, namely, ideality factor and optical intensity; both of which are found to change significantly at low temperature. The forward current‒voltage characteristics over the temperature range from 311 to 77 K have been used to evaluate the values of ideality factor at different temperatures. A critical analysis of the experimental data on ideality factor for both the devices reveals that the tunneling enhanced interface recombination mechanism is dominantly responsible for electrical transport and suggests a temperature induced phase transition for current carriers. Finally, we have studied the interrelation among optical intensity, characteristic energy and tunneling carriers and have shown how the carrier transition affects the optical intensity.