Abstract

Highly efficient InGaN-base light emitting diodes are crucial for next generation solid state lighting. However, drawbacks in substrate materials such as lattice and thermal expansion coefficient mismatches hold back the lamination efficiency improvement. In the past, patterned sapphire sustrate (PSS) has been proven to be effect to enhance the LED’s performance. In this work, we reviewed several promising nano-scale technologies which successfully increase the output of LED through better material quality and light extraction. First, we presented a study of high-performance blue emission GaN LEDs using GaN nanopillars (NPs). It exhibits smaller blue shift in electroluminescent peak wavelength and great enhancement of the light output (70% at 20 mA) compared with the conventional LEDs. Secondly, GaN based LEDs with nano-hole patterned sapphire (NHPSS) by nano-imprint lithography are fabricated structure grown on sapphire substrate. At an injection current of 20mA, the LED with NHPSS increased the light output power of LEDs by 1.33 times, and the wall-plug efficiency is 30% higher at 20mA indicating that it had larger light extraction efficiency (LEE). Finally, we fabricated the high performance electrical pumping GaN-based semipolar {10-11} nano-pyramid LEDs on c-plane sapphire substrate by selective area epitaxy (SAE). The emission wavelength only blue-shifted about 5nm as we increased the forward current from 40 to 200mA, and the quantum confine stark effect (QCSE) had been remarkably suppressed on semipolar surface at long emission wavelength region. These results manifest the promising role of novel nanotechnology in the future III-nitride light emitters.

© 2011 Optical Society of America