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Handbook of Advanced Lighting Technology pp 149–179Cite as

Thin-GaN LED Materials

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Abstract

In this chapter, thin film GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) fabricated into n-side-up and p-side-up LEDs on mirror-substrate structures using a combination of wafer bonding, laser lift-off and surface texturing techniques were described. The effects of Pd, ITO/Al, NiO/Ag, NiO/Ag/Ni, and NiO/Au/Ag mirrors on the n-side-up GaN/mirror/Si LED properties were studied. It was found that the characteristics of the vertical-conducting n-side-up GaN/mirror/Si LEDs with a NiO/Ag/Ni mirror structure showed the best performance than the other mirror ones. After the thermal anneal process, the specific contact resistance of NiO/Ag/Ni to p-GaN can be reduced. The output power of the n-side-up GaN/mirror/Si LED shows nearly three times in magnitude as compared with that of the original GaN/sapphire sample. On the other hand, the p-side-up GaN LEDs were fabricated using a combination of omni-directional reflector (ODR) and double-sided textured surface (both p-GaN and undoped-GaN) techniques. An Essential Macleod program was used to simulate the optimum thickness of the ODR structure. The reflectivity value of ODR structure used in work can reach 99%. On the top-side textured surface, the p-type GaN with hexagonal cavities was grown under low temperature (LT) conditions using metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. The GaN LED with a suitable LT p-GaN cap layer thickness was also studied. Experimental results indicate that the GaN LED sample with the 200-nm hexagonal cavity GaN layer on the surface exhibits a 50% enhancement in luminance intensity. The luminance efficiency can be improved. This indicates that the thin-film structure can enhance the light extraction efficiency of GaN-based LEDs, especially for large chip sizes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan

    Ray-Hua Horng

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  1. Ray-Hua Horng
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Correspondence to Ray-Hua Horng .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Smart Lighting Engineering Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA

    Robert Karlicek

  2. Department of Optics and Photonics, National Central University, Jhongli, Taiwan

    Ching-Cherng Sun

  3. Toulouse University, Toulouse, France

    Georges Zissis

  4. OLED Lighting, Universal Display Corporation, Ewing, USA

    Ruiqing Ma

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Horng, RH. (2017). Thin-GaN LED Materials. In: Karlicek, R., Sun, CC., Zissis, G., Ma, R. (eds) Handbook of Advanced Lighting Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00176-0_13

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