We investigated the optical and electrical properties of red AlGaInP light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as functions of chip size, p-cladding layer thickness, and the number of multi-quantum wells (MQWs). External quantum efficiency (EQE) decreased with decreasing chip size. The ideality factor gradually increased from 1.47 to 1.95 as the chip size decreased from 350 μm to 15 μm. This indicates that the smaller LEDs experienced larger carrier loss due to Shockley-Read-Hall nonradiative recombination at sidewall defects. S parameter, defined as ∂lnL/∂lnI, increased with decreasing chip size. Simulations and experimental results showed that smaller LEDs with 5 pairs of MQWs had over 30% higher IQE at 5 A/cm than the LED with 20 pairs of MQWs. These results show that the optimization of the number of QWs is needed to obtain maximum EQE of micro-LEDs.

No abstract

We have investigated how different types of the reflectors affected the optical and electrical performance of AlGaInP-based micro-LEDs. Simulations showed that the AlGaAs-based epitaxial distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) had a stopband at the 610-624 nm region with reflectivity of 90%, the SiO 2 /TiO 2 dielectric DBR gave a stopband at the 580-770 nm range with a maximum reflectivity of 99%, and the ITO/Ag metal reflector exhibited reflectivity of 90% across the 400-800 nm region. All micro-LEDs gave forward voltages of 1.895-1.960 V at 20 μA. The micro-LEDs with the dielectric DBR and metal reflector yielded 31% and 13% higher light output at 20 μA than that with the epitaxial DBR, respectively. All of the micro-LEDs contained a shoulder peak at approximately 615 nm in their electroluminescence spectra. Ray-tracing simulations exhibited that the micro-LEDs with the dielectric DBR and metal reflector produced 26% and 22% higher total light output power than the one with the epitaxial DBR, respectively. It was also shown that for the micro-LEDs with the metal reflector, some of the micro-LEDs were detached from the metal reflectors due to the interfacial voids induced as a result of agglomeration of Ag layer during fabrication process.