"W-shaped" injection current dependence of electroluminescence linewidth in green InGaN/GaN-based LED grown on silicon substrate.

Abstract

Injection current, and temperature, dependences of the electroluminescence (EL) spectrum from green InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well (MQW)-based light-emitting diodes (LED) grown on a Si substrate, are investigated over a wide range of injection currents (0.5 µA-350 mA) and temperatures (6-350 K). The results show that an increasing temperature can result in the change of injection current-dependent behavior of the EL spectrum in initial current range. That is, with increasing the injection current in the low current range, the emission process of the MQWs is dominated by filling effect of low-energetic localized states at the low temperature range of around 6 K, and by Coulomb screening of the quantum confinement Stark effect followed by a filling effect of the higher levels of the low-energetic localized states at the intermediate temperature range of around 160 K. However, when the temperature is further raised to the higher temperature range of around 350 K, the emission process of the MQWs in the low current range is dominated by carrier-scattering effect followed by non-radiative recombination process. The aforementioned current-dependent behaviors of the EL spectrum are mainly attributed to the strong localized effect of the green LED, as confirmed by the anomalous temperature dependence of the EL spectrum measured at the low injection current of 5 µA. In addition, the injection current dependence of external quantum efficiency at different temperatures shows that, with increasing temperature from 6 to 350 K, in addition to the enhanced non-radiative recombination, electron overflow becomes more significant, especially in the higher temperature range above 300 K.