Nanowire-based Light-emitting Diodes Research Articles

Identification of multi-color emission from coaxial GaInN/GaN multiple-quantum-shell nanowire LEDs.

Multi-color emission from coaxial GaInN/GaN multiple-quantum-shell (MQS) nanowire-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) was identified. In this study, MQS nanowire samples for LED processes were selectively grown on patterned commercial GaN/sapphire substrates using metal–organic chemical vapor deposition. Three electroluminescence (EL) emission peaks (440, 540, and 630 nm) were observed, which were primarily attributed to the nonpolar m-planes, semipolar r-planes, and the polar c-plane tips of nanowire arrays. A modified epitaxial growth sequence with improved crystalline quality for MQSs was used to effectively narrow the EL emission peaks. Specifically, nanowire-based LEDs manifested a clear redshift from 430 nm to 520 nm upon insertion of AlGaN spacers after the growth of each GaInN quantum well. This demonstrates the feasibility of lengthening the EL emission wavelength since an AlGaN spacer can suppress In decomposition of the GaInN quantum wells during ramping up the growth temperature for GaN barriers. EL spectra showed stable emission peaks as a function of the injection current, verifying the critical feature of the non-polarization of GaN/GaInN MQSs on nanowires. In addition, by comparing EL and photoluminescence spectra, the yellow-red emission linked to the In-fluctuation and point defects in the c-plane MQS was verified by varying the activation annealing time and lowering the growth temperature of the GaInN quantum wells. Therefore, optimization of MQS nanowire growth with a high quality of c-planes is considered critical for improving the luminous efficiency of nanowire-based micro-LEDs/white LEDs.

Emission characteristics of GaInN/GaN multiple quantum shell nanowire-based LEDs with different p-GaN growth conditions

Abstract Improving current injection into r- and m-planes of nanowires (NWs) is essential to realizing efficient GaInN/GaN multiple quantum shell (MQS) NW-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Here, we present the effects of different p-GaN shell growth conditions on the emission characteristics of MQS NW-LEDs. Firstly, a comparison between cathodoluminescence (CL) and electroluminescence (EL) spectra indicates that the emission in NW-LEDs originates from the top region of the NWs. By growing thick p-GaN shells, the variable emission peak at around 600 nm and degradation of the light output of the NW-LEDs are elaborated, which is attributable to the localization of current in the c-plane region with various In-rich clusters and deep-level defects. Utilizing a high growth rate of p-GaN shell, an increased r-plane and a reduced c-plane region promote the deposition of indium tin oxide layer over the entire NW. Therefore, the current is effectively injected into both the r- and m-planes of the NW structures. Consequently, the light output and EL peak intensity of the NW-LEDs are enhanced by factors of 4.3 and 13.8, respectively, under an injection current of 100 mA. Furthermore, scanning transmission electron microscope images demonstrate the suppression of dislocations, triangular defects, and stacking faults at the apex of the p-GaN shell with a high growth rate. Therefore, localization of current injection in nonradiative recombination centers near the c-plane was also inhibited. Our results emphasize the possibility of realizing high efficacy in NW-LEDs via optimal p-GaN shell growth conditions, which is quite promising for application in the long-wavelength region.

Design of a Horizontally Aligned Perovskite Nanowire LED With Improved Light Extraction

Within a short span of a few years, metal halide perovskite light-emitting diodes have shot past the 20 percent external quantum efficiency mark. As the material quality and photoluminescent quantum yield of perovskite are already at par with the state-of-the-art, light extraction for further quantum efficiency enhancement has taken the center stage of scientific interest. Herein, we demonstrate horizontally aligned perovskite nanowire-based light-emitting diodes with 50.9 percent of light extraction efficiency, with a 2.9-fold increase compared to the planar counterpart. The absorption spectra of the plane wave incidence exhibit the weak trapping of light within the emission range. Purcell factors of horizontal perovskite nanowires with different diameters are also studied, which provides design guidelines for applying the horizontally aligned perovskite nanowires for multifarious optoelectronic applications such as lasing. The resonance peak positioned at 530 nm wavelength shows the nanowire antennas’ effect in the nanowires with diameters of 300 nm, 500 nm, and 550 nm respectively. Furthermore, the fabrication process of the light-emitting devices based on ink-jet printing has also been proposed. This report not only provides an in-depth understanding of light extraction in nanowire LEDs but also heralds the inception of horizontally aligned perovskite nanowire-based optoelectronic devices.

Full-Color III-Nitride Nanowire Light-Emitting Diodes

III-nitride nanowire-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have been intensively studied as promising candidates for future lighting technologies. Compared to conventional GaN-based planar LEDs, III-nitride nanowire LEDs exhibit numerous advantages including greatly reduced dislocation densities, polarization fields, and quantum-conned Stark effect due to the effective lateral stress relaxation, promising high-efficiency full-color LEDs. Beside these advantages, however, several issues have been identified as the limiting factors for further enhancing the nanowire LED quantum efficiency and light output power. Some of the most probable causes have been identified as due to the lack of carrier confinement in the active region, non-uniform carrier distribution, electron overflow, and the nonradiative recombination along the nanowire lateral surfaces. Moreover, the presence of large surface states and defects contribute significantly to the carrier loss in nanowire LEDs. Consequently, reported nanowire LEDs show relatively low output power. Recently, III-nitride core-shell nanowire LED structures have been reported as the most efficient nanowire white LEDs with a record-high output power which is more than 500 times stronger than that of nanowire white LEDs without using core-shell structure. In this context, we will review the current status, challenges, and approaches for the high-performance IIInitride nanowire LEDs. More specifically, we will describe the current methods for the fabrication of nanowire structures including top-down and bottom-up approaches, followed by characteristics of III-nitride nanowire LEDs. We will then discuss the carrier dynamics and loss mechanism in nanowire LEDs. The typical designs for the enhanced performance of III-nitride nanowire LEDs will be presented next. The color-tunable nanowire LEDs with emission wavelengths in the visible spectrum and phosphor-free nanowire white LEDs will be finally discussed.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.

Universal and scalable route to fabricate GaN nanowire-based LED on amorphous substrate by MOCVD

GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on sapphire are known to exhibit high efficiency and long lifetime. Currently, Si substrate has been explored for the replacement of sapphire substrate due to the size limitations. In order to fabricate the cost-effective LEDs on larger scale, the most efficient approach is the growth of scalable and high crystal quality GaN nanowires on amorphous substrate, preferably glass. Here, for the first time, we have demonstrated the growth of GaN nanowire-based LEDs using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on an amorphous glass substrate. Additionally, the InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well shells are conformally grown on semipolar {112¯2} growth facet of m-axial GaN core nanowires and resulted in reduced quantum confined Stark effect. The optical properties of the nanowire-ensemble are rigorously evaluated by both temperature-dependent and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL), whereas the emission from the single nanowire is examined by spatially resolved cathodoluminescence. The PL spectroscopy of the GaN core nanowire-ensemble reveals a very high crystal quality due to the dominant emission from the band-to-band transition and absence of a characteristic yellow luminescence. Furthermore, the temperature-dependent PL of the nanowire ensemble exhibits a very high internal quantum efficiency of 76.1 %. Therefore, the ultrashort radiative lifetime of the carriers was in the range between 19 ps and 54 ps. These results emphasize the potential of our approach to grow high-crystal quality GaN nanowires on amorphous substrates for large scale production and various optical applications such as LEDs, solar cells, and photodetectors.

Colour optimization of phosphor-converted flexible nitride nanowire white light emitting diodes

We demonstrate flexible nanowire white light-emitting-diodes (LEDs) with an optimized colour quality. The devices consist of flexible InGaN/GaN nanowire LEDs acting as pumps, capped with removable phosphor-doped polydimethylsiloxane membranes. Five different phosphors with tens of microns in grain size emitting from green to orange are investigated using both violet-blue and a blue-green nanowire-based LED pumps. In addition, a flexible nanowire white LED with a warm white emission is demonstrated using two layers of different phosphors. Compared to the previous realizations of flexible nanowire white LEDs, these novel LEDs improve the colour rendering index from 54 to 86 and show a colour tuneable from a bluish cool white colour to natural white and finally to warm white. The flexibility tests show that the LEDs can be bent down to 1.5 cm curvature radius without significant degradation. Therefore, the replacement of the nano-phosphors used in the previous realization by relatively inexpensive micro-phosphors does not degrade the good mechanical flexibility of the white nanowire LEDs.

Enhanced Ultraviolet Emission from Hydrothermally Grown ZnO Nano-Grass on Si Substrate

Highly crystalline one-dimensional zinc oxide (ZnO) nano-grass was grown on silicon (Si) substrate by a modified hydrothermal method. A predominantly c-oriented ZnO nano-grass with an average diameter of 40–60 nm and length of 1.5–2.0 μm was obtained. From the photoluminescence (PL) measurement, we observed a defect-free, intense ultraviolet emission of as-grown ZnO nano-grass, confirming the absence of singly ionized oxygen vacancies. The absence of green deep-level emission in the PL spectrum further implies a high crystallinity of as-grown ZnO nano-grass. The high-quality ZnO nano-grass has potential applications in single nanowire-based light-emitting diodes, solar cells, themoresistive sensing, photocatalysis, ultraviolet photodetectors, optical switches, waveguides and nano-lasers.

(Invited) High-Speed GaN-Based Micro-Scale Light-Emitting Diodes for Visible-Light Communication

The increasing demand for wireless data communication and popularity of solid-state lighting has prompted research into visible-light communication (VLC) systems using GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). VLC is a promising candidate for next-generation (5G and beyond) light-fidelity (Li-Fi) network systems. To support multi-Gb/s data rates, VLC systems will require efficient LEDs with large modulation bandwidths. Conventional lighting-class LEDs cannot achieve high-speed operation due to their large chip size, large active region volume, and phosphor-converted output. Conversely, micro-scale LEDs (micro-LEDs) offer a viable path to high-speed operation due to their lower parasitic capacitance and ability for operation at high current densities where the carrier lifetime is significantly reduced. Furthermore, conventional c-plane LEDs suffer from polarization-related electric fields, which reduce the overlap between the electron and hole wave functions and lower the carrier recombination rate. Since modulation bandwidth is proportional to the carrier recombination rate (inversely proportional to the carrier lifetime), the overlap between the wave functions should be maximized for high-speed operation. Nonpolar and semipolar orientations have significantly reduced polarization effects and wave function overlaps approaching unity. These orientations can enable high-efficiency LEDs with simultaneously large modulation bandwidths, especially at relatively low current densities. In this work, we introduce VLC and discuss progress on the growth, fabrication, and characterization of high-speed micro-LEDs. Polar (0001), nonpolar (1010), and semipolar (2021) InGaN/GaN micro-LEDs on free-standing GaN substrates are investigated for their small-signal modulation characteristics as a function of current density, temperature, device area, and active region design. We demonstrate that the modulation bandwidths are well correlated with the wave function overlap in the active region by examining the orientation-dependence of the bandwidth. Record modulation bandwidths for GaN-based LEDs above 1 GHz are achieved for the nonpolar and semipolar orientations. We also show the modulation characteristics of an electrically injected nanowire-based LED, which achieves a modulation bandwidth of 1.2 GHz. Finally, we present a small-signal modeling method for determining the RC characteristics, differential carrier lifetime, carrier escape lifetime, and injection efficiency of the LEDs under electrical injection and discuss the results in the context of efficiency droop. Figure 1: Bandwidth vs. current density for the nonpolar LEDs (open black triangles), semipolar LED (open blue circles), and polar c-plane LED (open green squares) compared to other reported polar c-plane LEDs on sapphire or with a flip-chip design and compared to semipolar (1122) LEDs. The bandwidth characteristics for a nanowire-based LED are also included. Also shown are the crystal orientations used in the orientation-dependent bandwidth study. Figure 1

Comparing directed efficiency of III-nitride nanowire light-emitting diodes

III-nitride-based nanowires are a promising platform for solid-state lighting. III-nitride nanowires that act as natural waveguides to enhance directed extraction have previously been shown to be free of extended defects even on foreign substrates, such as silicon. While the efficiency of nanowire-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has been investigated, there has yet to be a comparison of heterostructures based on nanowires grown in different crystallographic directions. We compared the directed external quantum efficiency (EQE) of III-nitride LEDs on silicon based on axial and radial nanowire heterostructures, considering m - and c -directional nanowires. The directed extraction efficiency was calculated using photonic simulations, and the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) was estimated using the A-B-C model. We found that m -directional axial heterostructures have the highest directed extraction efficiency, due to the strong polarization anisotropy of III-nitrides, and display similar IQE as c -directional axial heterostructures. By combining IQE and directed extraction, a range of directed expected EQEs reveal that m -directional axial heterostructures have EQEs up to three times that of c -directional axial heterostructures, providing guidelines for the design of future nanowire-based LEDs.

GaN nanowire/thin film vertical structure p–n junction light-emitting diodes

Here, we report vertical-type GaN nanowire-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) fabricated by the metal-catalyzed vapor–liquid–solid (VLS) method. The nickel-catalyzed VLS process yielded both n-GaN nanowires and GaN nanoislands on substrates. The nanoislands markedly deteriorated the diode and electroluminescent characteristics in n-nanowire/p-film LED structures because of parasitic resistance and deep level emission caused by nanoislands. By burying the nanoislands with an insulating layer and adopting coaxial p–n junction nanowire structures, nanowire-based LEDs were shown to exhibit superior device performance, including highly rectifying and monochromatic electroluminescent characteristics. Thus, the undesirable effects associated with nanoislands were considerably suppressed. This work provides a rationale for designing high-performance vertical nanowire-based LEDs.

Core–shell multi-quantum wells in ZnO/ZnMgO nanowires with high optical efficiency at room temperature

Nanowire-based light-emitting devices require multi-quantum well heterostructures with high room temperature optical efficiencies. We demonstrate that such efficiencies can be attained through the use of ZnO/Zn(1−x)MgxO core–shell quantum well heterostructures grown by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy. Varying the barrier Mg concentration from x = 0.15 to 0.3 leads to the formation of misfit induced dislocations in the multi-quantum wells. Correlatively, temperature dependent photoluminescence reveals that the radial well luminescence intensity decreases much less rapidly with increasing temperature for the lower Mg concentration. Indeed, about 54% of the 10 K intensity is retained at room temperature with x = 0.15, against 1% with x = 0.30. These results open the way to the realization of high optical efficiency nanowire-based light-emitting diodes.

Submicrometre resolved optical characterization of green nanowire-based light emittingdiodes

The electroluminescent properties of InGaN/GaN nanowire-based light emitting diodes(LEDs) are studied at different resolution scales. Axial one-dimensional heterostructureswere grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PAMBE) directly on a silicon(111) substrate and consist of the following sequentially deposited layers: n-type GaN,three undoped InGaN/GaN quantum wells, p-type AlGaN electron blocking layer andp-type GaN. From the macroscopic point of view, the devices emit light in the greenspectral range (around 550 nm) under electrical injection. At 100 mA DC current, a1 mm2 chip thatintegrates around 107 nanowires emits an output power on the order of10 µW. However, the emission of the nanowire-based LED shows a spotty andpolychromatic emission. By using a confocal microscope, we have been ableto improve the spatial resolution of the optical characterizations down tothe submicrometre scale that can be assessed to a single nanowire. Detailedμ-electroluminescent characterization (emission wavelength and output power)over a representative number of single nanowires provides new insights intothe vertically integrated nanowire-based LED operation. By combining bothμ-electroluminescentand μ-photoluminescent excitation, we have experimentally shown that electrical injectionfailure is the major source of losses in these nanowire-based LEDs.

GaAs/AlGaAs Core Multishell Nanowire-Based Light-Emitting Diodes on Si

We report on integration of GaAs nanowire-based light-emitting-diodes (NW-LEDs) on Si substrate by selective-area metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. The vertically aligned GaAs/AlGaAs core-multishell nanowires with radial p-n junction and NW-LED array were directly fabricated on Si. The threshold current for electroluminescence (EL) was 0.5 mA (current density was approximately 0.4 A/cm(2)), and the EL intensity superlinearly increased with increasing current injections indicating superluminescence behavior. The technology described in this letter could help open new possibilities for monolithic- and on-chip integration of III-V NWs on Si.