• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.626-631
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• 2005

GaN-related compound semiconductors were grown on the corrugated interface substrate using a metalorganic chemical vapor deposition system to increase the optical power of white LEDs. The patterning of substrate for enhancing the extraction efficiency was processed using an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching system and the surface morphology of the etched sapphire wafer and that of the non-etched surface were investigated using an atomic force microscope. The structural and optical properties of GaN grown on the corrugated interface substrate were characterized by a high-resolution x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscope and photoluminescence. The roughness of the etched sapphire wafer was higher than that of the non-etched one. The surface of III-nitride films grown on the hemispherically patterned wafer showed the nano-sized pin-holes that were not grown partially. In this case, the leakage current of the LED chip at the reverse bias was abruptly increased. The reason is that the hemispherically patterned region doesn't have (0001) plane that is favor for GaN growth. The lateral growth of the GaN layer grown on (0001) plane located in between the patterns was enhanced by raising the growth temperature ana lowering the reactor pressure resulting in the smooth surface over the patterned region. The crystal quality of GaN on the patterned substrate was also similar with that of GaN on the conventional substrate and no defect was detected in the interface. The optical power of the LED on the patterned substrate was $14\%$ higher than that on the conventional substrate due to the increased extraction efficiency.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.31-31
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• 2010

The growth of the high-quality GaN epilayers is of significant technological importance because of their commercializedoptoelectronic applications as high-brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs) in the visible and ultraviolet spectral range. The GaN-based heterostructural epilayers have the polar c-axis of the hexagonal structure perpendicular to the interfaces of the active layers. The Ga and N atoms in the c-GaN are alternatively stacked along the polar [0001] crystallographic direction, which leads to spontaneous polarization. In addition, in the InGaN/GaN MQWs, the stress applied along the same axis contributes topiezoelectric polarization, and thus the total polarization is determined as the sum of spontaneous and piezoelectric polarizations. The total polarization in the c-GaN heterolayers, which can generate internal fields and spatial separation of the electron and hole wave functions and consequently a decrease of efficiency and peak shift. One of the possible solutions to eliminate these undesirable effects is to grow GaN-based epilayers in nonpolar orientations. The polarization effects in the GaN are eliminated by growing the films along the nonpolar [$11\bar{2}0$] ($\alpha$-GaN) or [$1\bar{1}00$] (m-GaN) orientation. Although the use of the nonpolar epilayers in wurtzite structure clearly removes the polarization matters, however, it induces another problem related to the formation of a high density of planar defects. The large lattice mismatch between sapphiresubstrates and GaN layers leads to a high density of defects (dislocations and stacking faults). The dominant defects observed in the GaN epilayers with wurtzite structure are one-dimensional (1D) dislocations and two-dimensional (2D) stacking faults. In particular, the 1D threading dislocations in the c-GaN are generated from the film/substrate interface due to their large lattice and thermal coefficient mismatch. However, because the c-GaN epilayers were grown along the normal direction to the basal slip planes, the generation of basal stacking faults (BSFs) is localized on the c-plane and the generated BSFs did not propagate into the surface during the growth. Thus, the primary defects in the c-GaN epilayers are 1D threading dislocations. Occasionally, the particular planar defects such as prismatic stacking faults (PSFs) and inversion domain boundaries are observed. However, since the basal slip planes in the $\alpha$-GaN are parallel to the growth direction unlike c-GaN, the BSFs with lower formation energy can be easily formed along the growth direction, where the BSFs propagate straightly into the surface. Consequently, the lattice mismatch between film and substrate in $\alpha$-GaN epilayers is mainly relaxed through the formation of BSFs. These 2D planar defects are placed along only one direction in the cross-sectional view. Thus, the nonpolar $\alpha$-GaN films have different atomic arrangements along the two orthogonal directions ($[0001]_{GaN}$ and $[\bar{1}100]_{GaN}$ axes) on the $\alpha$-plane, which are expected to induce anisotropic biaxial strain. In this study, the anisotropic strain relaxation behaviors in the nonpolar $\alpha$-GaN epilayers grown on ($1\bar{1}02$) r-plane sapphire substrates by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVO) were investigated, and the formation mechanism of the abnormal zigzag shape PSFs was discussed using high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM).

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.08a
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• pp.153-153
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• 2010

Recently, to develop GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with better performances, various approaches have been suggested by many research groups. In particular, using the patterned sapphire substrate technique has shown the improvement in both internal quantum efficiency and light extraction properties of GaN-based LEDs. In this paper, we discuss the influences of the direction of the hexagonal-structure arrays of lens-shaped patterns (HSAPs) formed on sapphire substrates on the crystal, optical, and electrical properties of InGaN/GaN multi-quantum-well (MQW) LEDs. The basic direction of the HSAPs is normal (HSAPN) with respect to the primary flat zone of a c-plane sapphire substrate. Another HSAP tilted by 30o (HSAP30) from the HSAPN structure was used to investigate the effects of the pattern direction. The full width at half maximums (FWHMs) of the double-crystal x-ray diffraction (DCXRD) spectrum for the (0002) and (1-102) planes of the HSAPN are 320.4 and 381.6 arcsecs., respectively, which are relatively narrower compared to those of the HSP30. The photoluminescence intensity for the HSAPN structure was ~1.2 times stronger than that for the HSAP30. From the electroluminescence (EL) measurements, the intensity for both structures are almost similar. In addition, the effects of the area of the individual lens pattern consisting of the hexagonal-structure arrays are discussed using the concept of the planar area fraction (PAF) defined as the following equation; PAF = [1-(patterns area/total unit areas)] For the relatively small PAF region up to 0.494, the influences of the HSAP direction on the LED characteristics were significant. However, the direction effects of the HSAP became small with increasing the PAF.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.64-70
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• 2012

We analyzed the changes in electrical and optical characteristics of 1 $mm^2$ multiple-quantum-well (MQW) blue LEDs grown on a c-plane sapphire substrate after a stress test. Experiments were performed by injecting 50 mA current for 200 hours to TO-CAN packaged sample chips. We selected the value of injection current for stress through the junction-temperature measurement by using the forward-voltage characteristics of a diode to maintain a sufficiently low junction temperature during the test. The junction temperature at the selected injection current of 50 mA was 308 K. Experiments were performed under the assumption that the average junction temperature of 308 K did not affect the characteristics of the ohmic contact and the GaN-based materials. Before and after the stress test, we measured and analyzed current-voltage, light-current, light distribution on the LED surface, wavelength spectrum and relative external quantum efficiency (EQE). After the stress test, it was observed experimentally that the optical power and the relative EQE decreased. We theoretically investigated and experimentally proved that these phenomena are due to the increased nonradiative recombination rate caused by the increased defect density.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.172-173
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• 2012

Currently GaN based LED is known to show high internal or external efficiency at low current range. However, this LED operation occurs at high current range and in this range, a significant performance degradation known as 'efficiency droop' occurs. Auger process, carrier leakage process, field effect due to lattice mismatch and thermal effects have been discussed as the causes of loss of efficiency, and these phenomena are major hindrance in LED performance. In order to investigate the main effects of efficiency loss and overcome such effects, it is essential to obtain relative proportion of measurements of internal quantum efficiency (IQE) and various radiative and nonradiative recombination processes. Also, it is very important to obtain radiative and non-radiative recombination times in LEDs. In this research, we measured the IQE of InGaN/GaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs) LEDs with PSS and Planar substrate using modified ABC equation, and investigated the physical mechanism behind by analyzing the emission energy, full-width half maximum (FWHM) of the emission spectra, and carrier recombination dynamic by time-resolved electroluminescence (TREL) measurement using pulse current generator. The LED layer structures were grown on a c-plane sapphire substrate and the active region consists of five 30 ${\AA}$ thick In0.15Ga0.85N QWs. The dimension of the fabricated LED chip was $800um{\times}300um$. Fig. 1. is shown external quantum efficiency (EQE) of both samples. Peak efficiency of LED with PSS is 92% and peak efficiency of LED with planar substrate is 82%. We also confirm that droop of PSS sample is slightly larger than planar substrate sample. Fig. 2 is shown that analysis of relation between IQE and decay time with increasing current using TREL method.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.636-641
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• 2012

In this study, we have investigated highly efficient nanoscale surface corrugated light emitting diodes (LEDs) for the enhancement of light extraction efficiency (LEE) of nitride semiconductor LEDs. Nanoscale indium tin oxide (ITO) surface corrugations are fabricated by using the conformal nanoimprint technique; it was possible to observe an enhancement of LEE for the ITO surface corrugated LEDs. By incorporating this novel method, we determined that the total output power of the surface corrugated LEDs were enhanced by 45.6% for patterned sapphire substrate LEDs and by 41.9% for flat c-plane substrate LEDs. The enhancement of LEE through nanoscale surface corrugations was studied using 3-dimensional Finite Different Time Domain (FDTD) calculation. From the FDTD calculations, we were able to separate the light extraction from the top and bottom sides of device. This process revealed that light extraction from the top and bottom sides of a device strongly depends on the substrate and the surface corrugation. We found that enhanced LEE could be understood through the mechanism of enhanced light transmission due to refractive index matching and the increase of light scattering from the corrugated surface. LEE calculations for the encapsulated LEDs devices also revealed that low LEE enhancement is expected after encapsulation due to the reduction of the refractive index contrast.