Nitride Light-emitting Diodes Research Articles

A Comprehensive Review of Group-III Nitride Light-Emitting Diodes: From Millimeter to Micro-Nanometer Scales.

This review describes the development history of group-III nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for over 30 years, which has achieved brilliant achievements and changed people's lifestyles. The development process of group-III nitride LEDs is the sum of challenges and solutions constantly encountered with shrinking size. Therefore, this paper uses these challenges and solutions as clues for review. It begins with reviewing the development of group-III nitride materials and substrates. On this basis, some key technological breakthroughs in the development of group-III nitride LEDs are reviewed, mainly including substrate pretreatment and p-type doping in material growth, the proposal of new device structures such as nano-LED and quantum dot (QD) LED, and the improvement in luminous efficiency, from the initial challenge of high-efficiency blue luminescence to current challenge of high-efficiency ultraviolet (UV) and red luminescence. Then, the development of micro-LEDs based on group-III nitride LEDs is reviewed in detail. As a new type of display device, micro-LED has drawn a great deal of attention and has become a research hotspot in the current international display area. Finally, based on micro-LEDs, the development trend of nano-LEDs is proposed, which is greener and energy-saving and is expected to become a new star in the future display field.

Non-destructive electroluminescence inspection for LED epitaxial wafers based on soft single-contact operation

Non-destructive and accurate inspection of gallium nitride light-emitting diode (GaN-LED) epitaxial wafers is important to GaN-LED technology. However, the conventional electroluminescence inspection, the photoluminescence inspection, and the automated optical inspection cannot fulfill the complex technical requirements. In this work, an inspection method and an operation system based on soft single-contact operation, namely, single-contact electroluminescence (SC-EL) inspection, are proposed. The key component of the SC-EL inspection system is a soft conductive probe with an optical fiber inside, and an AC voltage (70V pp , 100 kHz) is applied between the probe and the ITO electrode under the LED epitaxial wafer. The proposed SC-EL inspection can measure both the electrical and optical parameters of the LED epitaxial wafer at the same time, while not causing mechanical damage to the LED epitaxial wafer. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the SC-EL inspection has a higher electroluminescence wavelength accuracy than photoluminescence inspection. The results show that the non-uniformity of SC-EL inspection is 444.64%, which is much lower than that of photoluminescence inspection. In addition, the obtained electrical parameters from SC-EL can reflect the reverse leakage current (I s ) level of the LED epitaxial wafer. The proposed SC-EL inspection can ensure high inspection accuracy without causing damage to the LED epitaxial wafer, which holds promising application in LED technology.

Enhancing the Performance of GaN-Based Light-Emitting Diodes by Incorporating a Junction-Type Last Quantum Barrier

In this paper, an n-i-p-type GaN barrier for the final quantum well, which is closest to the p-type GaN cap layer, is proposed for nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to enhance the confinement of electrons and to improve the efficiency of hole injection. The performances of GaN-based LEDs with a traditional GaN barrier and with our proposed n-i-p GaN barrier were simulated and analyzed in detail. It was observed that, with our newly designed n-i-p GaN barrier, the performances of the LEDs were improved, including a higher light output power, a lower threshold voltage, and a stronger electroluminescence emission intensity. The light output power can be remarkably boosted by 105% at an injection current density of 100 A/cm2 in comparison with a traditional LED. These improvements originated from the proposed n-i-p GaN barrier, which induces a strong reverse electrostatic field in the n-i-p GaN barrier. This field not only enhances the confinement of electrons but also improves the efficiency of hole injection.

Injection mechanisms in a III -nitride light-emitting diode as seen by self-emissive electron microscopy

Injection mechanisms in a <i>III</i> -nitride light-emitting diode as seen by self-emissive electron microscopy

Electric-driven flexible-roller nanoimprint lithography on the stress-sensitive warped wafer

Surface nanopatterning of semiconductor optoelectronic devices is a powerful way to improve their quality and performance. However, photoelectric devices’ inherent stress sensitivity and inevitable warpage pose a huge challenge on fabricating nanostructures large-scale. Electric-driven flexible-roller nanoimprint lithography for nanopatterning the optoelectronic wafer is proposed in this study. The flexible nanoimprint template twining around a roller is continuously released and recovered, controlled by the roller’s simple motion. The electric field applied to the template and substrate provides the driving force. The contact line of the template and the substrate gradually moves with the roller to enable scanning and adapting to the entire warped substrate, under the electric field. In addition, the driving force generated from electric field is applied to the surface of substrate, so that the substrate is free from external pressure. Furthermore, liquid resist completely fills in microcavities on the template by powerful electric field force, to ensure the fidelity of the nanostructures. The proposed nanoimprint technology is validated on the prototype. Finally, nano-grating structures are fabricated on a gallium nitride light-emitting diode chip adopting the solution, achieving polarization of the light source.

Capillary-based fluorescent antenna for visible light communications.

The use of fluorescent optical antennas in visible light communications (VLC) systems can enhance their performance by selectively absorbing light from the transmitter and concentrating the resulting fluorescence, whilst preserving a wide field of view. In this paper, we introduce a new and flexible way of creating fluorescent optical antennas. This new antenna structure is a glass capillary which is filled with a mixture of epoxy and a fluorophore before the epoxy is cured. Using this structure, an antenna can be easily and efficiently coupled to a typical photodiode. Consequently, the leakage of photons from the antenna can be significantly reduced when compared to previous antennas created using microscope slides. Moreover, the process of creating the antenna is simple enough for the performance of antennas containing different fluorophores to be compared. In particular, this flexibility has been used to compare VLC systems that incorporate optical antennas containing three different organic fluorescent materials, Coumarin 504 (Cm504), Coumarin 6 (Cm6), and 4-(Dicyanomethylene)-2-methyl-6-(4-dimethylaminostyryl)-4H-pyran (DCM), when a white light-emitting diode (LED) is used as the transmitter. Results show that, since it only absorbs light emitted from the gallium nitride (GaN) LED, a fluorophore that hasn't previously been used in a VLC system, Cm504, can result in a significantly higher modulation bandwidth. In addition, the bit error rate (BER) performance at different orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) data rates of antennas containing different fluorophores is reported. These experiments show for the first time that the best choice of fluorophore depends on the illuminance at the receiver. In particular, when the illuminance is low, the overall performance of the system is dominated by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Under these conditions, the fluorophore with the highest signal gain is the best choice. In contrast, when the illuminance is high, the achievable data rate is determined by the bandwidth of the system and therefore the fluorophore that results in the highest bandwidth is the best choice.

Realizing Single Chip White Light InGaN LED via Dual-Wavelength Multiple Quantum Wells.

Dual-wavelength multiple quantum wells (MQWs) have great potential in realizing high quality illumination, monolithic micro light-emitting diode (LED) displays and other related fields. Here, we demonstrate a single chip white light indium gallium nitride (InGaN) LED via the manipulation of the dual-wavelength MQWs. The MQWs contain four pairs of blue light-emitting MQWs and one pair of green light-emitting QW. The fabricated LED chips with nickel/gold (Ni/Au) as the current spreading layer emit white light with the injection current changing from 0.5 mA to 80 mA. The chromaticity coordinates of (0.3152, 0.329) closing to the white light location in the Commission International de I’Eclairage (CIE) 1931 chromaticity diagram are obtained under a 1 mA current injection with a color rendering index (CRI) Ra of 60 and correlated color temperature (CCT) of 6246 K. This strategy provides a promising route to realize high quality white light in a single chip, which will significantly simplify the production process of incumbent white light LEDs and promote the progress of high-quality illumination.

Quenching of the Efficiency Droop in Cubic Phase InGaAlN Light-Emitting Diodes

We show that the coexistence of strong internal polarization and large carrier (i.e., electron and hole) effective mass accounts for ~51% of the efficiency droop under high current densities in traditional (hexagonal-phase) indium–gallium–aluminum–nitride (InGaAlN) light-emitting diodes (h-LEDs) compared to cubic-phase InGaAlN LEDs (c-LEDs). Our analysis based on variational technique on c-LEDs predicts an enhancement of the current density at the onset of the droop, inherently present in green c-LEDs. These effects are a consequence of the polarization-free nature and small carrier effective mass of c-LEDs. Our analysis indicates that, by overlooking the electron–hole wave function overlap, the well-known ABC model is suspected to overestimate the Auger coefficient, leading to questionable conclusions on the efficiency droop. In turn, it shows that the c-LED efficiency droop is much immune to the Auger electron–hole asymmetry, the increase in the Auger coefficient, and, thus, efficiency degradation mechanisms.

Superior Optoelectronic Performance of N-Polar GaN LED to Ga-Polar Counterpart in the “Green Gap” Range

The low luminous efficiency of indium gallium nitride (InGaN) light-emitting diodes (LED) in the “green gap” range has been a long unsettled issue confounding the researchers. One of the main obstacles comes from the intrinsic polarization field in the incumbent Ga-polar LEDs (Ga-LEDs), where the polarization field will bend the energy band thus reducing the radiative recombination efficiency. The scenario will become different when we reverse the polarization field with the adoption of N-polar GaN, which should be a promising candidate to obtain LEDs with high luminous efficiency in the “green gap” range. In this study, the optical and electronic performances of InGaN LEDs in the “green gap” range with N- and Ga-polar have been numerically investigated. The results demonstrate that the light-output power of N-polar LED (N-LED) is ~1.69-fold higher than that of Ga-LED at a current density of 1250 A/cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , thus leading to a significantly improved internal quantum efficiency. Meanwhile, the turn-on voltage of N-LED is lowered by ~17.3% compared to that of Ga-LED. As revealed by the energy band diagram, the superior optoelectronic performance of N-LED is mainly attributed to the stronger carrier confinement in the active region and the lower carrier injection barriers. This study suggests the prospective realization of high luminous efficiency InGaN LEDs in the “green gap” range by the implementation of N-LEDs.

Back‐Contacted Carrier Injection for Scalable GaN Light Emitters

It has recently been proposed that back‐contacted III–V light‐emitting diodes (LEDs) could offer improved current spreading as compared to conventional mesa or double side contacted structures. This has inspired also experimental efforts to realize such structures, but fabrication methods for them have not yet been fully established. Herein, the use of unintentionally doped and partially carrier‐selective contacts (SC) is studied to realize back‐contacted indium gallium nitride (InGaN) LEDs. The sharp electroluminescence peak at 439 nm from the multiquantum well stack demonstrates that the approach allows fabricating back‐contacted InGaN LEDs without intentionally doped n‐GaN layers and without inflicting damage in the active region, often observed in alternative approaches relying on lateral doping and the use of high energy particles during fabrication. The samples are fabricated on a finger configuration with several finger widths between 1 and 20 μm. It is observed that the emission spreads most uniformly throughout the structure for fingers with the width of 5 μm. As shown by the simulations, with improved contact resistances, the structures reported herein could enable fabricating back‐contacted LEDs with unity injection efficiency and improved current spreading, offering a path toward large‐area LEDs without contact shading even in materials where n‐doping is elusive.

III-Nitride Light-Emitting Devices

III-nitride light-emitting devices have been subjects of intense research for the last several decades owing to the versatility of their applications for fundamental research, as well as their widespread commercial utilization. Nitride light-emitters in the form of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and lasers have made remarkable progress in recent years, especially in the form of blue LEDs and lasers. However, to further extend the scope of these devices, both below and above the blue emission region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and also to expand their range of practical applications, a number of issues and challenges related to the growth of materials, device design, and fabrication need to be overcome. This review provides a detailed overview of nitride-based LEDs and lasers, starting from their early days of development to the present state-of-the-art light-emitting devices. Besides delineating the scientific and engineering milestones achieved in the path towards the development of the highly matured blue LEDs and lasers, this review provides a sketch of the prevailing challenges associated with the development of long-wavelength, as well as ultraviolet nitride LEDs and lasers. In addition to these, recent progress and future challenges related to the development of next-generation nitride emitters, which include exciton-polariton lasers, spin-LEDs and lasers, and nanostructured emitters based on nanowires and quantum dots, have also been elucidated in this review. The review concludes by touching on the more recent topic of hexagonal boron nitride-based light-emitting devices, which have already shown significant promise as deep ultraviolet and single-photon emitters.

Polarization-insensitive GaN metalenses at visible wavelengths

The growth of wide-bandgap materials on patterned substrates has revolutionized the means with which we can improve the light output power of gallium nitride (GaN) light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Conventional patterned structure inspection usually relies on an expensive vacuum-system-required scanning electron microscope (SEM) or optical microscope (OM) with bulky objectives. On the other hand, ultra-thin metasurfaces have been widely used in widespread applications, especially for converging lenses. In this study, we propose newly developed, highly efficient hexagon-resonated elements (HREs) combined with gingerly selected subwavelength periods of the elements for the construction of polarization-insensitive metalenses of high performance. Also, the well-developed fabrication techniques have been employed to realize the high-aspect-ratio metalenses working at three distinct wavelengths of 405, 532, and 633 nm with respective diffraction-limited focusing efficiencies of 93%, 86%, and 92%. The 1951 United States Air Force (USAF) test chart has been chosen to characterize the imaging capability. All of the images formed by the 405-nm-designed metalens show exceptional clear line features, and the smallest resolvable features are lines with widths of 870 nm. To perform the inspection capacity for patterned substrates, for the proof of concept, a commercially available patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) for the growth of the GaN LEDs has been opted and carefully examined by the high-resolution SEM system. With the appropriately chosen metalenses at the desired wavelength, the summits of structures in the PSS can be clearly observed in the images. The PSS imaging qualities taken by the ultra-thin and light-weight metalenses with a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.3 are comparable to those seen by an objective with the NA of 0.4. This work can pioneer semiconductor manufacturing to choose the polarization-insensitive GaN metalenses to inspect the patterned structures instead of using the SEM or the bulky and heavy conventional objectives.

High quality GaN tetrapodal structures hetero-integrated on 3D Si surfaces

Gallium nitride (GaN) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on silicon (Si) substrates have been highlighted due to the potentials to achieve significant cost reduction, effective thermal management, and highly directional light emission, by replacing the conventional sapphire substrates with the opportunities to adopt the well-established Si-based semiconducting technologies. However, large mismatch of physical properties between Si and GaN considerably lowers the material quality of GaN and the corresponding device performances. Herein, we employ three-dimensional faceted Si surfaces (3D faceted Si) to effectively release the generated strain energy during the hetero-epitaxial growth of GaN on Si for fabricating high performance GaN-on-Si LEDs. The resulting outcome not only includes the unique morphology of 3D tetrapodal GaN layers on 3D faceted Si to form space-filling arrays for efficient device utilization, but also contains the excellent material quality of the hetero-integrated GaN layers, comparable to that grown on planar sapphire substrates. Consequently, those 3D tetrapodal GaN-on-Si LEDs exhibit the excellent light extraction characteristics due to their shapes to effectively suppress total internal reflection of generated light. In addition, the anisotropic formation of active layers in the 3D tetrapodal GaN-on-Si LEDs performs multi-color emission characteristics with tunable color capabilities.

A 3D simulation comparison of carrier transport in green and blue c-plane multi-quantum well nitride light emitting diodes

Until recently, the electrical efficiency of green nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs) was considerably lower than that of blue LEDs. This is particularly surprising as one would expect a reduced forward voltage with increasing emission wavelength. In this paper, we theoretically investigated the impact of the number of quantum wells on the forward voltage of III-nitride LEDs with x = 0.15 (blue) and x = 0.24 (green) InxGa1–xN QWs. The simulated dependence of current density (J) on applied diode bias (V) shows a significant increase of 1.9 V in the forward voltage between one and five quantum well (QW) c-plane green LED structures. Artificially turning off the polarization fields in the simulation does not entirely suppress this effect. Due to the large band offsets in the green LED multiple QW stack, simulations indicate a sequential band filling of the QW sequence. This mechanism should not be limited to c-plane LEDs and could also be present in nonpolar or semipolar devices.

Nitride light-emitting diodes for cryogenic temperatures.

A novel approach to fabricate efficient nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs) grown on gallium polar surface operating at cryogenic temperatures is presented. We investigate and compare LEDs with standard construction with structures where p-n junction field is inverted through the use of bottom tunnel junction (BTJ). BTJ LEDs show improved turn on voltage, reduced parasitic recombination and increased quantum efficiency at cryogenic temperatures. This is achieved by moving to low resistivity n-type contacts and nitrogen polar-like built-in field with respect to current flow. It inhibits the electron overflow past quantum wells and improves hole injection even at T=12K. Therefore, as cryogenic light sources, BTJ LEDs offer significantly enhanced performance over standard LEDs.

Graphene–Insulator–Semiconductor Ultraviolet Light-Responsive Nitride LEDs for Multi-Applications

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are ubiquitous in our daily life nowadays. Among them, ultraviolet LEDs are unique because of their wide range of potential applications, spanning from biomedicine, env...

Unidirectional luminescence from InGaN/GaN quantum-well metasurfaces

III–nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are the backbone of ubiquitous lighting and display applications. Imparting directional emission is an essential requirement for many LED implementations. Although optical packaging1, nanopatterning2,3 and surface roughening4 techniques can enhance LED extraction, directing the emitted light requires bulky optical components. Optical metasurfaces provide precise control over transmitted and reflected waveforms, suggesting a new route for directing light emission. However, it is difficult to adapt metasurface concepts for incoherent light emission, due to the lack of a phase-locking incident wave. Here, we demonstrate a metasurface-based design of InGaN/GaN quantum-well structures that generate narrow, unidirectional transmission and emission lobes at arbitrary engineered angles. We further demonstrate 7-fold and 100-fold enhancements of total and air-coupled external quantum efficiencies, respectively. The results present a new strategy for exploiting metasurface functionality in light-emitting devices. Exploiting two-dimensional metamaterials, the direction of emission from InGaN/GaN quantum wells is engineered while simultaneously improving quantum efficiency.

Characterization of the Interdependence Between the Light Output and Self-Heating of Gallium Nitride Light-Emitting Diodes

Abstract With the advent of gallium nitride (GaN) as an enabling material system for the solid-state lighting industry, high-power and high-brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with wavelengths ranging from near ultraviolet to blue are being manufactured as part of a tremendously large and ever-increasing market. However, device self-heating and the environment temperature significantly deteriorate the LED's optical performance. Hence, it is important to accurately quantify the LED's temperature and correlate its impact on optical performance. In this work, three different characterization methods and thermal simulation were used to measure and calculate the temperature rise of an InGaN/GaN LED, as a result of self-heating. Nanoparticle-assisted Raman thermometry was used to measure the LED mesa surface temperature. A transient Raman thermometry technique was utilized to investigate the transient thermal response of the LED. It was found that under a 300 mW input power condition, self-heating is negligible for an input current pulse width of 1 ms or less. The temperature measured using nanoparticle-assisted Raman thermometry was compared with data obtained by using the forward voltage method (FVM) and infrared (IR) thermal microscopy. The IR and Raman measurement results were in close agreement whereas the data obtained from the widely accepted FVM underestimated the LED temperature by 5–10%. It was also observed that an increase in environment temperature from 25 °C to 100 °C would degrade the LED optical power output by 12%.

Retinal phototoxicity and the evaluation of the blue light hazard of a new solid-state lighting technology

Exposure Limit Values (ELV) for artificial lighting were defined in order to prevent light-induced damage to the retina. The evaluation of the lighting devices include the correction of their spectra by the B(λ) function or blue light hazard function, representing the relative spectral sensitivity of the human eye to the blue light. This weighting function peaks between 435 and 440 nm. In this study we evaluate a new generation of light emitting diode (LED), the GaN-on-GaN (gallium nitride on gallium nitride) LED, that present an emission peak in the purple part of the spectrum. Wistar rats were exposed to GaN-on-GaN and conventional diodes at different retinal doses (from 2.2 to 0.5 J/cm2). We show that GaN-on-GaN diodes are more toxic than conventional LED for the rat neural retina and the rat retinal pigment epithelium, indicating that the BLH (blue light hazard) weighting is not adapted to this type of diodes. One of the reasons of this increased toxicity is the effects of shorter wavelengths on mitochondria polarization. We also show that the threshold of phototoxic retinal dose in the rat (fixed at 11 J/cm2, BLH weighted) is overestimated, suggesting that the values used for regulations, calculated in primates using the same methods than in rats, should be revised.

Room-temperature one-pot synthesis of highly stable SiO2-coated Mn-doped all-inorganic perovskite CsPb0.7Mn0.3Br0.75Cl2.25 quantum dots for bright white light-emitting diodes

In this paper, we report a simple one-pot strategy to synthesize highly stable SiO2-coated orange-yellow CsPb0.7Mn0.3Br0.75Cl2.25 quantum dots with strong orange-yellow photoluminescence. The microstructure characterization indicates that the CsPb0.7Mn0.3Br0.75Cl2.25 quantum dots were effectively encapsulated by the SiO2. The SiO2-coated CsPb0.7Mn0.3Br0.75Cl2.25 quantum dots show higher humidity stability and thermal stability than the CsPb0.7Mn0.3Br0.75Cl2.25 quantum dots without SiO2 coating. The white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) were obtained by coating orange-yellow CsPb0.7Mn0.3Br0.75Cl2.25@SiO2 and blue CsPbBrCl2@SiO2 quantum dots on the ultraviolet gallium nitride light-emitting diode chip. The as-prepared white light-emitting diodes show bright white light emission with a color coordinate of (0.3347, 0.2825), color rendering index of 82 and correlated color temperature of 5329 K. The results provide a simple method to fabricate stable orange-yellow luminescent material for white light-emitting diodes.