Transparent Current Spreading Layer Research Articles

Graphene-Enhanced UV-C LEDs.

Light-emitting diodes in the UV-C spectral range (UV-C LEDs) can potentially replace bulky and toxic mercury lamps in a wide range of applications including sterilization and water purification. Several obstacles still limit the efficiencies of UV-C LEDs. Devices in flip-chip geometry suffer from a huge difference in the work functions between the p-AlGaN and high-reflective Al mirrors, whereas the absence of UV-C transparent current spreading layers limits the development of UV-C LEDs in standard geometry. Here it is demonstrated that transfer-free graphene implemented directly onto the p-AlGaN top layer by a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition approach enables highly efficient 275nm UV-C LEDs in both, flip-chip and standard geometry. In flip-chip geometry, the graphene acts as a contact interlayer between the Al-mirror and the p-AlGaN enabling an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 9.5% and a wall-plug efficiency (WPE) of 5.5% at 8V. Graphene combined with a ∼1nm NiOx support layer allows a turn-on voltage <5V. In standard geometry graphene acts as a current spreading layer on a length scale up to 1mm. These top-emitting devices exhibit a EQE of 2.1% at 8.7V and a WPE of 1.1%. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Heavily Ge-doped GaN as transparent current spreading layer for blue tunnel junction light emitting diodes

We report on metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy of highly conductive germanium-doped GaN layers and their application for blue tunnel-junction light emitting diodes (TJ-LEDs). Using Ge as donor, carrier densities of up to 2 × 1020 cm−3 and low bulk resistivities down to 3 × 10−4 Ωcm are achieved. Under optimum growth conditions, no degradation of the crystalline quality is observed and layers exhibit high transparency making GaN:Ge very attractive as current spreading layer in light emitting devices. We have realized GaN-based TJ-LEDs by capping conventional InGaN LED structures with highly doped GaN:Ge. Such TJ-LEDs withstand operation currents up to 20 kA/cm2 in continuous and up to 60 kA/cm2 in pulsed operation conditions. Moreover, TJ-LEDs exhibit homogeneous electroluminescence and light output through the top surface that is increased by more than 60% as compared to conventional LEDs with transparent indium tin oxide contacts. The impact of the doping profile, carrier gas conditions, and acceptor activation by annealing for low-resistive TJ characteristics is discussed. Light output and current voltage characteristics of blue-light emitting devices with GaN-TJ are presented at low and high-current densities.

Discretely-supported nanoimprint lithography for patterning the high-spatial-frequency stepped surface

Non-planar morphology is a common feature of devices applied in various physical fields, such as light or fluid, which pose a great challenge for surface nano-patterning to improve their performance. The present study proposes a discretely-supported nanoimprint lithography (NIL) technique to fabricate nanostructures on the extremely non-planar surface, namely high-spatial-frequency stepped surface. The designed discretely imprinting template implanted a discretely-supported intermediate buffer layer made of sparse pillars arrays. This allowed the simultaneous generation of air-cushion-like buffer and reliable support to the thin structured layer in the template. The resulting low bending stiffness and distributed concentrated load of the template jointly overcome the contact difficulty with a stepped surface, and enable the template to encase the stepped protrusion as tight as possible. Based on the proposed discretely-supported NIL, nanostructures were fabricated on the luminous interface of light emitting diodes chips that covered with micrometer step electrodes pad. About 96% of the utilized indium tin oxide transparent current spreading layer surface on top of the light emitting diode (LED) chips was coated with nanoholes array, with an increase by more than 40% in the optical output power. The excellent ability of nanopatterning a non-planar substrate could potentially lead innovate design and development of high performance device based on discretely-supported NIL.

N-ZnO nanorod arrays/p-GaN light-emitting diodes with graphene transparent electrode

Few-layer graphene sheets are applied as transparent electrode and current spreading layer for n-ZnO nanorod arrays/p-GaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The device with graphene electrode exhibits improved electroluminescence (EL) performance in EL intensity and reliability compared to the n-ZnO nanorod arrays/p-GaN LED with conventional indium-tin-oxide (ITO) electrode. The results prove that, with its superior electrical, optical and thermal properties, graphene can be an ideal candidate for transparent electrodes in nanorod arrays-based LEDs.

Lateral Current Spreading in III-N Ultraviolet Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers Using Modulation-Doped Short Period Superlattices

Lateral hole injection into AlGaN-based ultraviolet (UV) vertical-cavity light-emitting lasers (VCSELs) has been studied via numerical simulation. For blue and violet vertical cavity light emitters, indium tin oxide (ITO) is most commonly used as a transparent current spreading layer to increase the overlap between the optical mode and the radial current profile. However, ITO has very high optical losses in the UV spectrum, so alternative schemes for lateral current spreading have been investigated for use in UV-VCSELs. A modulation doped short-period superlattice (MD-SPSL) has been proposed as a transparent lateral current spreading layer in UV-VCSELs. The narrow bandgap unintentionally doped (uid) material maintains a high mobility due to reduced impurity scattering and has a high free hole concentration due to modulation doping, thus forming highly conductive channels which aid lateral hole transport. This has been shown to partially mitigate current crowding around the current aperture. To account for imperfect modulation doping due to the magnesium memory effects and other factors, the effect of varying the hole mobility in the uid-narrow bandgap layer of the MD-SPSL from 13–300 cm2/( $\text {V}\cdot \text {s}$ ) on the threshold current and slope efficiency has also been studied. Employing an MD-SPSL results in a significant reduction in the threshold current and slope efficiency compared to ITO, and the extent of the improvement depends on the hole mobility in the uid-AlGaN layer.

Nano-imprinting of refractive-index-matched indium tin oxide sol-gel in light-emitting diodes for eliminating total internal reflection.

Refractive-index (RI)-matched nanostructures are implemented in GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for enhancing light output efficiency. The RI-matched indium tin oxide (ITO) nanostructures are successfully implemented in GaN-based lateral LEDs by using ITO sol–gel and nanoimprint lithography. The ITO sol–gel nanostructures annealed at 300 °C have RI of 1.95, showing high transparency of 90% and high diffused transmittance of 34%. Consequently, the light output power in LEDs with the RI-matched nanostructures increases by 8% in comparison with that in LEDs containing flat ITO. Ray tracing and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations show that the RI-matched nanostructures on the transparent current spreading layer dramatically reduce Fresnel reflection loss at the interface of the current spreading layer with the nanostructure and extract confined waveguide lights in LEDs.

Numerical simulation and experimental investigation of GaN-based flip-chip LEDs and top-emitting LEDs.

We demonstrate a GaN-based flip-chip LED (FC-LED) with a highly reflective indium-tin oxide (ITO)/distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) ohmic contact. A transparent ITO current spreading layer combined with Ta2O5/SiO2 double DBR stacks is used as a reflective p-type ohmic contact in the FC-LED. We develop a strip-shaped SiO2 current blocking layer, which is well aligned with a p-electrode, to prevent the current from crowding around the p-electrode. Our combined numerical simulation and experimental results revealed that the FC-LED with ITO/DBR has advantages of better current spreading and superior heat dissipation performance compared to top-emitting LEDs (TE-LEDs). As a result, the light output power (LOP) of the FC-LED with ITO/DBR was 7.6% higher than that of the TE-LED at 150mA, and the light output saturation current was shifted from 130.9 A/cm2 for the TE-LED to 273.8 A/cm2 for the FC-LED with ITO/DBR. Owing to the high reflectance of the ITO/DBR ohmic contact, the LOP of the FC-LED with ITO/DBR was 13.0% higher than that of a conventional FC-LED with Ni/Ag at 150mA. However, because of the better heat dissipation of the Ni/Ag ohmic contact, the conventional FC-LED with Ni/Ag exhibited higher light output saturation current compared to the FC-LED with ITO/DBR.

The role of ITO resistivity on current spreading and leakage in InGaN/GaN light emitting diodes

The effect of a transparent ITO current spreading layer on electrical and light output properties of blue InGaN/GaN light emitting diodes (LEDs) is discussed. When finite conductivity of ITO is taken into account, unlike in previous models, the topology of LED die and contacts are shown to significantly affect current spreading and light output characteristics in top emitting devices. We propose an approach for calculating the current transfer length describing current spreading. We show that an inter-digitated electrode configuration with distance between the contact pad and the edge of p-n junction equal to transfer length in the current spreading ITO layer allows one to increase the optical area of LED chip, as compared to the physical area of the die, light output power, and therefore, the LED efficiency for a given current density. A detailed study of unpassivated LEDs also shows that current transfer lengths longer than the distance between the contact pad and the edge of p-n junction leads to increasing surface leakage that can only be remedied with proper passivation.

A Power-Type Single GaN-Based Blue LED With Improved Linearity for 3 Gb/s Free-Space VLC Without Pre-equalization

A new GaN light-emitting diode (LED) structure, which has a 300-nm aluminum-doped zinc oxide transparent current spreading layer epitaxial layer grown on a standard GaN LED epistack used in commercial GaN LED products, shows improved power vs. voltage (P-V) linearity and is suitable for high-data rate visible light communication. Experimentally, a single GaN-based blue LED with a mesa diameter of 150 $\mu\text{m}$ and a maximum optical power of 42 mW demonstrates a 3-Gb/s free-space data transmission speed. The modulation bandwidth reaches 600 MHz under the present experimental setup. The present work proves the practicability of enhancing the LED's free-space data transmission ability through a P-V linearity improvement at the chip level.

Performance of GaN-Based LEDs with Nanopatterned Indium Tin Oxide Electrode

The indium tin oxide (ITO) has been widely applied in light emitting diodes (LEDs) as the transparent current spreading layer. In this work, the performance of GaN-based blue light LEDs with nanopatterned ITO electrode is investigated. Periodic nanopillar ITO arrays are fabricated by inductive coupled plasma etching with the mask of polystyrene nanosphere. The light extraction efficiency (LEE) of LEDs can be improved by nanopatterned ITO ohmic contacts. The light output intensity of the fabricated LEDs with nanopatterned ITO electrode is 17% higher than that of the conventional LEDs at an injection current of 100 mA. Three-dimensional finite difference time domain simulation matches well with the experimental result. This method may serve as a practical approach to improving the LEE of the LEDs.

Improved photovoltaic performance of InGaN/GaN solar cells with optimized transparent current spreading layers

In0.135Ga0.865N/GaN p–i–n solar cells are fabricated and investigated with three types of transparent current spreading layers (TCSLs): Ni/Au layer type (Ni/Au-L), Ni/Au grid type (Ni/Au-G), and ITO layer type (ITO-L). The performance of solar cell is improved with optimized TCSL and the best result is achieved in device with ITO-L. These results indicate that TCSL can strongly affect the device property, and its optimization is necessary in order to obtain better photovoltaic performance.

Transparent conducting ZnO nanorods for nanoelectrodes as a reverse tunnel junction of GaN light emitting diode applications

We demonstrated transparent vertical aligned ZnO nanorod arrays for nanoelectrodes as a reverse-tunnel junction of GaN LEDs. GaN LEDs with ZnO nanorod arrays for nanoelectrodes demonstrated three times enhanced light output power compared with that of GaN LEDs with tunnel junction ZnO thin film, resulting from increased light extraction efficiency. Tunnel junction ZnO nanorod arrays for nanoelectrodes offer both high transparent current spreading layer for uniform current injection and easy method for high extraction efficiency.

ITO界面调制层对GZO电极LED器件性能的影响

Indium-Tin-Oxide(40 nm)/Ga-doped ZnO(140 nm)(ITO/GZO) and GZO(180 nm) films were deposited onto both glass substrates and p-GaN epitaxial layers by magnetron sputtering as transparent current spreading layer of GaN-based LEDs.After thermal annealing in air ambient conditions,the ITO/GZO films exhibite high transparency(~80%) in visible light and low resistivity(1.15×10-3 Ω·cm).The roughness of the ITO/GZO films is bigger than that of the GZO films which enhances the extraction of photons.The ITO interface modulation layer can reduce the contact barrier of GZO/p-GaN and improve the photoeletric performance of LEDs.GaN-based light-emitting diodes(LEDs) were also fabricated.With 20 mA injection current,it is found that the forward voltage are 6.8 V and 9.5 V,while the luminous intensity are 297 mcd and 245 mcd,respectively for the LEDs with ITO/GZO electrode and GZO electrode.Compared the LEDs with GZO electrodes,the luminous intensity of LEDs with ITO/GZO electrode increased by 20% at 20 mA forward current and increased by 50% at 35 mA forward current.

High efficiency white LEDs with single-crystal ZnO current spreading layers deposited by aqueous solution epitaxy

Heteroepitaxial ZnO transparent current spreading layers with low sheet resistances were deposited on GaN-based light emitting diodes using aqueous solution phase epitaxy at temperatures below 90°C. The performance of the LEDs was analyzed and compared to identical devices using electron-beam evaporated indium tin oxide transparent current spreading layers. White LEDs with ZnO layers provided high luminous efficacy–157 lm/W at 0.5A/cm2, and 84.8 lm/W at 35A/cm2, 24% and 50% higher, respectively, than devices with ITO layers. The improvement appears to be due to the enhanced current spreading and low optical absorption provided by the ZnO.

Hafnium-doped GaN with n-type electrical resistivity in the 10−4 Ω cm range

Hafnium (Hf) as an n-type dopant for group III nitride is proposed and investigated. Uniform doping of Hf into GaN realized an electrical resistivity as small as 7.89 × 10−4 Ω cm, which approaches that of a typical electron-beam deposited indium-tin oxide (ITO) thin film (∼3.75 × 10−4 Ω cm). Depending on doping level, the room-temperature (RT) donor activation energy for Hf in GaN was estimated to be in the range of 85-132.5 meV. Highly conductive Hf-doped GaN thin films with atomically smooth surface feature were achieved via Hf-delta doping, with RT electrical resistivity as small as 1.24 × 10−3 Ω cm. These highly conductive Hf-doped GaN films can be used as n-type transparent current-spreading layer (TCL) for large area light-emitting diodes (LEDs). With further improvement, highly conductive Hf-doped GaN has potential to be used as p-type TCL replacing the traditional indium-tin oxide for GaN-based LEDs.

AlGaInP-Based LEDs With a ${\rm p}^{+}$-GaP Window Layer and a Thermally Annealed ITO Contact

In this paper, indium-tin-oxide (ITO) films were deposited on p-type GaP films with a AuBe-diffused metal layer to form ohmic contacts. Without the AuBe diffused into p-GaP films, the ITO deposited on p-GaP showed a non-ohmic characteristic. After the AuBe diffused, the ITO deposited on p-GaP displayed a linear current-voltage characteristic and the specific contact resistance showed 2.63 × 10-4 ω-cm2. Furthermore, the specific contact resistance could be improved to 1.57 × 10-4 ω-cm2 when the sample post-ITO-deposition annealed at 400°C. The transmittance of ITO film almost was kept at 90% in the wavelength range of 400-700 nm after thermal annealing. These results revealed that the ITO films can be a suitable transparent current spreading layer for the fabrication of AlGalnP-based light-emitting diodes with an AuBe-diffused metal layer. It was also found that the 20 mA forward voltages measured from LEDs with Device A, Device B, Device C and Device D were 1.97, 1.96, 1.95 and 2.66 V and the light output powers were 4.2, 5.7, 6.0 and 6.3 mW, respectively.

Postannealing Effect on ITO/p+-GaP with a Diffused Layer

In this study, indium tin oxide (ITO) films were deposited on p-type GaP films with a AuBe diffused metal layer to form ohmic contacts. Without the AuBe diffused into p-GaP films, the ITO deposited on p-GaP showed a non-ohmic characteristic. After the AuBe diffused, the ITO deposited on p-GaP displayed a linear current-voltage characteristic and the specific contact resistance showed 2.63 × 10−4 Ω cm2. Furthermore, the specific contact resistance could be improved to 1.57 × 10−4 Ω cm2 when the sample post-annealed at 400°C. The transmittance of ITO film almost was kept at 90% in the wavelength range of 400–700 nm after thermal annealing. These results revealed that the ITO films can be a suitable transparent current spreading layer for the fabrication of AlGaInP-based light-emitting diodes with a AuBe diffused metal layer.

Improved light extraction of GaN-based light-emitting diodes with surface-textured indium tin oxide electrodes by nickel nanoparticle mask dry-etching

GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with surface-textured indium tin oxide (ITO) as a transparent current spreading layer were fabricated. The ITO surface was textured by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching technology using a monolayer of nickel (Ni) nanoparticles as the etching mask. The luminance intensity of ITO surface-textured GaN-based LEDs was enhanced by about 34% compared to that of conventional LED without textured ITO layer. In addition, the fabricated ITO surface-textured GaN-based LEDs would present a quite good performance in electrical characteristics. The results indicate that the scattering of photons emitted in the active layer was greatly enhanced via the textured ITO surface, and the ITO surface-textured technique could have a potential application in improving photoelectric characteristics for manufacturing GaN-based LEDs of higher brightness.

A chip-level electrothermal-coupled design model for high-power light-emitting diodes

An advanced three-dimensional electrothermal-coupled simulation model basing on finite-element method numerical simulation is developed to study the electrical and thermal properties of chip-level high-power GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The current spreading, heat generation, and transfer in the device are comprehensively considered in this model. The current-spreading effect of the transparent current-spreading layer and the thermal performance of LEDs with interdigitated-electrodes are investigated. The simulation results prove that the temperature distribution in the active layer is strongly affected by the electrode pattern. The obvious heat accumulation in LEDs with conventional interdigitated-electrode patterns can be seen both in the simulated results and the infrared measured results. The heat transfer efficiency can be improved by using a symmetry electrode pattern design. The thermal management of the bump configurations in flip-chip LEDs is also studied. A more reasonable and thermal effective bump configuration is presented, and the simulated results show that a lower average temperature and more uniform heat distribution in the chips can be obtained.

Light extraction efficiency enhancement of GaN-based light emitting diodes by a ZnO current spreading layer

Gallium nitride (GaN) based light emitting diodes (LEDs) with a thick and high quality ZnO film as a current spreading layer grown by metal-source vapor phase epitaxy (MVPE) are fabricated successfully. Compared with GaN-based LEDs employing a Ni/Au or an indium tin oxide transparent current spreading layer, these LEDs show an enhancement of the external quantum efficiency of 93% and 35% at a forward current of 20 mA, respectively. The full width at half maximum of the ZnO (002) ω-scan rocking curve is 93 arcsec, which corresponds to a high crystal quality of the ZnO film. Optical microscopy and atomic force microscopy are used to observe the surface morphology of the ZnO film, and many regular hexagonal features are found. A spectrophotometer is used to study the different absorption properties between the ZnO film and the indium tin oxide film of the GaN LED. The mechanisms of the extraction quantum efficiency increase and the series resistance change of the GaN-based LEDs with ZnO transparent current spreading layers are analyzed.