Enhancement of InGaN/GaN based light emitting diode performance with step graded electron injectors through a two-step passivation is reported. Perimeter passivation of LED dies with SiO 2 immediately following ICP mesa etch in addition to conventional Si 3 N 4 dielectric surface passivation leads to decrease in the reverse bias leakage current by a factor of two as well as a decrease in the shunt current under forward bias by an order of magnitude. Mitigation of the leakage currents owing to the two-step passivation leads to significant increase in the radiant intensity of LEDs by more than a factor of two compared to the conventional single step surface passivation. Further, micro-dome patterned surface of Si 3 N 4 passivation layer allow enhanced light extraction from LEDs.

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.

This paper presents high performance, GaN/InGaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) in three different device configurations, namely Top Emitting (TE) LED, conventional Flip Chip (FC) and Distributed Contact (DC) FC. Series resistances as low as 1.1 Ω have been obtained from FC device configurations with a back reflecting ohmic contact of Ni/Au/RTA/Ni/Ag metal stack. A small shift has been observed between electroluminescence (EL) emissions of TE LED and the FC LEDs. In addition, FWHM value of the EL emission of DCFC LED has shown the minimum value of 160 meV (26.9 nm). Furthermore, DCFC LED configuration has shown the highest quantum efficiency and power output, with 330 mW at 500 mA current injection, compared to that of traditional wire bonded TE LEDs and the conventional FC LEDs.

We investigate the effect of InGaN stress compensation layer on the properties of light emitting diodes based on InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well (MQW) structures with stepgraded electron injectors. Insertion of an InGaN stress compensation layer between n-GaN and the step graded electron injector provides, among others, strain reduction in the MQW region and as a result improves epitaxial quality that can be observed by 15-fold decrease of V-pit density. We observed more uniform distribution of In between quantum wells in MQW region from results of electro-and photoluminescence measurement. These structural improvements lead to increasing of radiant intensity by a factor of 1.7e2.0 and enhancement of LED efficiency by 40%.