Theoretical analysis of semi/non-polar In GaN/GaN light-emitting diodes grown on silicon substrates

A theoretical study of polar and semi/non-polar In Ga N/Ga N light-emitting diodes(LEDs) with different internal surface polarization charges, which can be grown on Si substrates, is conducted by using APSYS software. In comparison with polar structure LEDs, the semi-polar structure exhibits a higher concentration of electrons and holes and radiative recombination rate, and its reduced built-in polarization field weakens the extent of band bending which causes the shift of peak emission wavelength. So the efficiency droop of semi-polar In Ga N/Ga N LEDs declines obviously and the optical power is significantly improved. In comparison with non-polar structure LEDs, although the concentration of holes and electrons as well as the radiative recombination rate of the semi-polar structure are better in the last two quantum wells(QWs) approaching the p-Ga N side, the uniformity of distribution of carriers and radiative recombination rate for the nonpolar structure is better. So the theoretical analysis indicates that the removal of the internal polarization field in the MQWs active regions for non-polar structure LEDs contributes to the uniform distribution of electrons and holes, and decreases the electron leakage. Thus it enhances the radiative recombination rate, and further improves the IQEs and optical powers, and shows the best photoelectric properties among these three structures.     

转移基板材质对Si衬底GaN基LED芯片性能的影响

在Si衬底上生长了GaN基LED外延材料,分别转移到新的硅基板和铜基板上,制备了垂直结构蓝光LED芯片。研究了这两种基板GaN基LED芯片的光电性能。在切割成单个芯片之前,对大量尺寸为(300μm×300μm)的这两种芯片分别通高达1 A的大电流在测试台上加速老化1 h。结果显示,铜基板Si衬底GaN基LED芯片有更大的饱和电流,光输出效率更高,工作电压随驱动电流的变化不大,光输出在老化过程中衰减更小。铜基板芯片比硅基板芯片可靠性更高,在大功率半导体照明器件中前景诱人。     

A dual-blue light-emitting diode based on strain-compensated InGaN-AlGaN/GaN quantum wells

A strain-compensated InGaN quantum well(QW) active region employing a tensile AlGaN barrier is analyzed.Its spectral stability and efficiency droop for a dual-blue light-emitting diode(LED) are improved compared with those of the conventional InGaN/GaN QW dual-blue LEDs based on a stacking structure of two In0.18Ga0.82N/GaN QWs and two In0.12Ga0.88N/GaN QWs on the same sapphire substrate.It is found that the optimal performance is achieved when the Al composition of the strain-compensated AlGaN layer is 0.12 in blue QW and 0.21 in blue-violet QW.The improvement performance can be attributed to the strain-compensated InGaN-AlGaN/GaN QW,which can provide a better carrier confinement and effectively reduce leakage current.     

插指型SiO_2电流阻挡层对大功率LED外量子效率的影响

为了改善蓝光大功率LED芯片p电极处的电流拥挤现象,提高大功率LED芯片的外量子效率,在ITO透明导电层与p-GaN间沉积插指型SiO_2电流阻挡层。采用等离子体增强化学气相沉积的方法沉积SiO_2薄膜,再经过光刻和BOE湿法刻蚀技术制备插指型SiO_2电流阻挡层。采用SimuLED仿真软件分析插指型SiO_2电流阻挡层对大功率LED芯片电流扩展性能的影响,研究插指型SiO_2电流阻挡层对大功率LED芯片外量子效率的影响。结果发现,插指型SiO_2电流阻挡层结构可以有效改善p电极附近的电流拥挤现象。与没有沉积插指型SiO_2电流阻挡层的大功率LED芯片相比,光输出功率得到显著的提高。在350 mA的输入电流下,沉积插指型SiO_2电流阻挡层后的大功率LED芯片的外量子效率提高了18.7%。     

Efficiency droop suppression in GaN-based light-emitting diodes by chirped multiple quantum well structure at high current injection

Gallium nitride(Ga N) based light-emitting diodes(LEDs) with chirped multiple quantum well(MQW) structures have been investigated experimentally and numerically in this paper. Compared to conventional LEDs with uniform quantum wells(QWs), LEDs with chirped MQW structures have better internal quantum efficiency(IQE) and carrier injection efficiency. The droop ratios of LEDs with chirped MQW structures show a remarkable improvement at 600 m A/mm2,reduced down from 28.6%(conventional uniform LEDs) to 23.7%(chirped MQWs-a) and 18.6%(chirped MQWs-b),respectively. Meanwhile, the peak IQE increases from 76.9%(uniform LEDs) to 83.7%(chirped MQWs-a) and 88.6%(chirped MQWs-b). The reservoir effect of chirped MQW structures is the significant reason as it could increase hole injection efficiency and radiative recombination. The leakage current and Auger recombination of chirped MQW structures can also be suppressed. Furthermore, the chirped MQWs-b structure with lower potential barriers can enhance the reservoir effect and obtain further improvement of the carrier injection efficiency and radiative recombination, as well as further suppressing efficiency droop.     

Improvement of interfacial adhesion in vertical GaN-based LEDs by introducing O2 plasma cleaning and intermediate layers

Interfacial adhesion between an indium tin oxide (ITO)/Ni/Ag/Ni/Au p-electrode, and Au and Ni/Au seeds in vertical GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) was enhanced by O₂ plasma cleaning treatment of the Au surface in the p-electrode. However, AES and REELS analyses of the Au surface in the p-electrode detected surface damage to the p-electrode and photoresist (PR) passivation structure from O₂ plasma cleaning. W/Ni and Al/Ni adhesion layers were introduced in the Au seed to increase interfacial adhesion between Au seed and untreated PR passivation. Forward leakage current as low as 0.91 nA at 2 V was observed for the vertical LED with the Al/Ni/Au seed, for which adhesion strength to O₂ plasma-cleaned Au and untreated PR was 141.2 MPa and 62.8 MPa, respectively.     

AlGaInP-Si glue bonded high performance light emitting diodes

We propose a new method of using conductive glue to agglutinate GaAs based AlGaInP light emitting diodes (LEDs) onto silicon substrate,and the absorbing GaAs layer is subsequently removed by grinding and selective wet etching.It was found that AlGaInP-Si glue agglutinated LEDs have larger saturation current and luminous intensity than the conventional LEDs working at the same injected current.The luminous intensity of the new device is as much as 1007.4 mcd at a saturation current of 125 mA without being encapsulated,while the conventional LEDs only have 266.2 mcd at a saturation current of 105 mA.The luminescence intensity is also found to increase by about 3.2% after working at 50 mA for 768 h.This means that the new structured LEDs have good reliability performance.     

Improvement of the carrier distribution with GaN/InGa N/AlGaN/InGaN/GaN composition-graded barrier for InGaN-based blue light-emitting diode

In Ga N light-emitting diodes(LEDs) with Ga N/In Ga N/Al Ga N/In Ga N/Ga N composition-graded barriers are proposed to replace the sixth and the middle five Ga N barriers under the condition of removing the electron blocking layer(EBL)and studied numerically in this paper. Simulation results show that the specially designed barrier in the sixth barrier is able to modulate the distributions of the holes and electrons in quantum well which is adjacent to the specially designed barrier. Concretely speaking, the new barrier could enhance both the electron and hole concentration remarkably in the previous well and reduce the hole concentration for the latter one to some extent along the growth direction. What is more,a phenomenon, i.e., a better carrier distribution in all the wells, just appears with the adoption of the new barriers in the middle five barriers, resulting in a much higher light output power and a lower efficiency droop than those in a conventional LED structure.     

Temperature-dependent photoluminescence spectra of GaN epitaxial layer grown on Si(111) substrate

In this paper, the temperature-dependent photoluminescence(PL) properties of Ga N grown on Si(111) substrate are studied. The main emission peaks of Ga N films grown on Si(111) are investigated and compared with those grown on sapphire substrates. The positions of free and bound exciton luminescence peaks, i.e., FX A and D0 X peaks, of Ga N films grown on Si(111) substrates undergo red shifts compared with those grown on sapphire. This is attributed to the fact that the Ga N films grown on sapphire are under the action of compressive stress, while those grown on Si(111) substrate are subjected to tensile stress. Furthermore, the positions of these peaks may be additionally shifted due to different stress conditions in the real sample growth. The emission peaks due to stacking faults are found in Ga N films grown on Si(111) and an S-shaped temperature dependence of PL spectra can be observed, owing to the influence of the quantum well(QW) emission by the localized states near the conduction band gap edge and the temperature-dependent distribution of the photo-generated carriers.     

Numerical Simulation on Thermal-Electrical Characteristics and Electrode Patterns of GaN LEDs with Graphene/NiO_x Hybrid Electrode

The thermal-electrical characteristic of a GaN light-emitting diode(LED) with the hybrid transparent conductive layers(TCLs) of graphene(Gr) and NiO_x is investigated by a finite element method.It is indicated that the LED with the compound TCL of 3-layer Gr and 1 nm NiO_x has the best thermal-electrical performance from the view point of the maximum temperature and the current density deviation of multiple quantum wells,and the maximum temperature occurs near the n-electrode rather than p-electrode.Furthermore,to depress the current crowding on the LED,the electrode pattern parameters including p- and n-electrode length,p-electrode buried depth and the distance of n-electrode to active area are optimized.It is found that either increasing p- or n-electrode length and buried depth or decreasing the distance of n-electrode from the active area will decrease the temperature of the LED,while the increase of the n-electrode length has more prominent effect.Typically,when the n-electrode length increases to 0.8 times of the chip size,the temperature of the GaN LED with the1 nm NiO_x/3-layer-Gr hybrid TCLs could drop about 7K and the current density uniformity could increase by23.8%,compared to 0.4 times of the chip size.This new finding will be beneficial for improvement of the thermalelectrical performance of LEDs with various conductive TCLs such as NiO_x/Gr or ITO/Gr as current spreading layers.     

Experimental evaluation of interface states during time-dependent dielectric breakdown of GaN-based MIS-HEMTs with LPCVD-SiN_x gate dielectric

We experimentally evaluated the interface state density of Ga N MIS-HEMTs during time-dependent dielectric breakdown(TDDB). Under a high forward gate bias stress, newly increased traps generate both at the Si Nx/Al Ga N interface and the Si Nx bulk, resulting in the voltage shift and the increase of the voltage hysteresis. When prolonging the stress duration, the defects density generated in the Si Nx dielectric becomes dominating, which drastically increases the gate leakage current and causes the catastrophic failure. After recovery by UV light illumination, the negative shift in threshold voltage(compared with the fresh one) confirms the accumulation of positive charge at the Si Nx/Al Ga N interface and/or in Si Nx bulk, which is possibly ascribed to the broken bonds after long-term stress. These results experimentally confirm the role of defects in the TDDB of Ga N-based MIS-HEMTs.     

Status of GaN-based green light-emitting diodes

GaN-based blue light emitting diodes(LEDs) have undergone great development in recent years,but the improvement of green LEDs is still in progress.Currently,the external quantum efficiency(EQE) of GaN-based green LEDs is typically30%,which is much lower than that of top-level blue LEDs.The current challenge with regard to GaN-based green LEDs is to grow a high quality In GaN quantum well(QW) with low strain.Many techniques of improving efficiency are discussed,such as inserting Al GaN between the QW and the barrier,employing prestrained layers beneath the QW and growing semipolar QW.The recent progress of GaN-based green LEDs on Si substrate is also reported:high efficiency,high power green LEDs on Si substrate with 45.2% IQE at 35 A/cm2,and the relevant techniques are detailed.     

量子垒结构对Si衬底GaN基绿光LED光电性能的影响

在Si衬底上外延生长了3种不同量子垒结构的绿光外延片并制作成垂直结构芯片,3种量子垒结构分别为Ga N、In0.05Ga0.95N/Al0.1Ga0.9N/In0.05Ga0.95N、In0.05Ga0.95N/Ga N/In0.05Ga0.95N,对应的3种芯片样品为A、B、C,研究了3种样品的变温电致发光特性。垒结构的改变虽然对光功率影响很小,但是在光谱性能上会引起显著改变,结果如下:在低温(13 K)大电流下,随着电流密度的增大,样品的EL谱峰值波长蓝移更为显著,程度依次为BA≈C;在高温(300 K)小电流下,随着电流密度的增大,样品EL谱的峰值波长蓝移程度的大小依次为ABC。在同一电流下,随着温度的升高,样品在大部分电流下的EL谱峰值波长出现"S"型波长漂移,在极端电流下又表现出不同的漂移情况。这些现象与局域态、应力、压电场、禁带宽度等因素有关。     

激光剥离技术实现垂直结构GaN基LED

为改善GaN基发光二极管(Light-emitting diode,LED)的电学特性和提高其输出光功率,采用激光剥离技术,在KrF准分子激光器脉冲激光能量密度为400mJ/cm2的条件下,将GaN基LED从蓝宝石衬底剥离,结合金属熔融键合技术,在300℃中将GaN基LED转移至高电导率和高热导率的硅衬底,制备出了具有垂直结构的GaN基LED,并对其电学和光学特性进行了测试。结果表明:在110mA注入电流下,垂直结构器件的开启电压由普通结构的3.68V降低到了3.27V;在560mA注入电流下,器件输出光功率没有出现饱和现象;采用高电导率和高热导率的硅衬底能有效地改善GaN基LED的电学和光学特性。     

Si(110)和Si(111)衬底上制备InGaN/GaN蓝光发光二极管

分别在Si(110)和Si(111)衬底上制备了In Ga N/Ga N多量子阱结构蓝光发光二极管(LED)器件.利用高分辨X射线衍射、原子力显微镜、室温拉曼光谱和变温光致发光谱对生长的LED结构进行了结构表征.结果表明,相对于Si(111)上生长LED样品,Si(110)上生长的LED结构晶体质量较好,样品中存在较小的张应力,具有较高的内量子效率.对制备的LED芯片进行光电特性分析测试表明,两种衬底上制备的LED芯片等效串联电阻相差不大,在大电流注入下内量子效率下降较小;但是,相比于Si(111)上制备LED芯片,Si(110)上LED芯片具有较小的开启电压和更优异的发光特性.对LED器件电致发光(EL)发光峰随驱动电流的变化研究发现,由于Si(110)衬底上LED结构中阱层和垒层存在较小的应力/应变而在器件中产生较弱的量子限制斯塔克效应,致使Si(110)上LED芯片EL发光峰随驱动电流的蓝移量更小.     

Comprehensive study of blue and green multi-quantum-well light-emitting diodes grown on conventional and lateral epitaxial overgrowth GaN

Growths of blue and green multi-quantum wells (MQWs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are realized on lateral epitaxial overgrowth (LEO) GaN, and compared with identical structures grown on conventional GaN. Atomic force microscopy is used to confirm the significant reduction of dislocations in the wing region of our LEO samples before active-region growth. Differences between surface morphologies of blue and green MQWs are analyzed. These MQWs are integrated into LEDs. All devices show a blue shift in the electroluminescence (EL) peak and narrowing in EL spectra with increasing injection current, both characteristics attributed to the band-gap renormalization. Green LEDs show a larger EL peak shift and a broader EL spectrum due to larger piezoelectric field and more indium segregation in the MQWs, respectively. Blue LEDs on LEO GaN show a higher performance than those on conventional GaN; however, no performance difference is observed for green LEDs on LEO GaN versus conventional GaN. The performance of the green LEDs is shown to be primarily limited by the active layer growth quality.     

6H-SiC衬底上AlGaN基垂直结构紫外LED的制备

利用金属有机物化学气相沉积方法,在n型6H-SiC衬底上制备了15对Si掺杂Al_(0.19)Ga_(0.81)N/Al_(0.37)Ga_(0.63)N DBR,并采用低温AlN缓冲层有效抑制了DBR结构中裂纹的产生,得到了表面均方根粗糙度仅为0.4 nm且导电性能良好的n型DBR,其在369 nm处峰值反射率为68%,阻带宽度为10 nm。在获得导电DBR的基础上,进一步在n型6H-SiC衬底上构建了有、无DBR的垂直结构紫外LED。对比两者电致发光光谱,发现DBR结构的引入有效增强了LED紫外发光强度。     

非等温模型下LED芯片性能与衬底的关系

发光二极管(LED)中载流子的输运及复合决定了其非均匀的内热源强度及分布,而芯片温度又影响载流子的输运及复合,两者具有强烈的耦合关系。本文利用非等温多物理场耦合模型对以蓝宝石、Si及SiC为衬底的 LED芯片的内量子效率、光谱特性及光电转换效率进行了系统研究。结果表明:以SiC为衬底的LED芯片具有最小的效率下垂效应(Efficiency droop)及最高的光谱强度和光电转换效率。这是因为与其他两种衬底的LED芯片相比,以SiC为衬底的LED芯片具有最好的散热性能,因此非均匀温度场对其载流子输运及复合的影响最小,使得活性区中的载流子浓度显著增强,漏电流明显下降。     

高掺杂Ga对ZnSe:Ga,Cu晶体中深中心发射的影响

本文研究了高掺杂Ga对ZnSe:Ga,Cu晶体中深中心光致发光谱带的影响。首次在高掺杂ZnSe:Ga,Cu中观察到了Cu-G带峰值位置随Ga浓度增大向长波方向移动的现象,并把它归因于高浓度的Ga和Cu相互作用,产生了谱峰为5580Å的新发射带,其半高宽(FWHM)大于Cu-G谱带的半高宽。此外还得到,随着Cu浓度增加,Cu-G带与Cu-R带强度之比减小。文中指出,Ga浓度较低时,ZnSe:Ga,Cu晶体与ZnSe:Cu晶体有相同的Cu深中心发射规律,即随着Cu浓度增大,Cu-G带与Cu-R带的强度比增大,由Cu-R发射带占优势逐渐过渡到Cu-G发射带占优势。     

A theoretical investigation of the band alignment of type-I direct band gap dilute nitride phosphide alloy of GaN_xAs_yP_(1-x-y)/GaP quantum wells on GaP substrates

The GaP-based dilute nitride direct band gap material Ga（NAsP） is gaining importance due to the monolithic integra- tion of laser diodes on Si microprocessors. The major advantage of this newly proposed laser material system is the small lattice mismatch between GaP and Si. However, the large threshold current density of these promising laser diodes on Si substrates shows that the carrier leakage plays an important role in Ga（NAsP）/GaP QW lasers. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the band alignment in this laser material system. In this paper, we present a theoretical investigation to optimize the band alignment of type-I direct band gap GaNxAsyP1-x-y/GaP QWs on GaP substrates. We examine the effect of nitrogen （N） concentration on the band offset ratios and band offset energies. We also provide a comparison of the band alignment of type-I direct band gap GaNxAsyP1-x-y/GaP QWs with that of the GaNxAsyP1-x-y/Al2Ga1-2P QWs on GaP substrates. Our theoretical calculations indicate that the incorporations of N into the well and AI into the barrier improve the band alignment compared to that of the GaAsP/GaP QW laser heterostructures.