Investigation of the Carrier Dynamic in GaN-Based Cascade Green Light-Emitting Diodes Using the Very Fast Electrical–Optical Pump–Probe Technique

For the first time, the internal carrier dynamic inside GaN-based green light-emitting diodes (LEDs) during operation has been directly observed using the demonstrated electrical-optical pump-probe technique. Short electrical pulses (~100 ps) were pumped into high-speed cascade green LEDs, and the output optical pulses were probed using high-speed photoreceiver circuits. Using such a method, the recombination time constant of the carriers can be directly measured without any assumption about the recombination process. A high-speed cascade LED structure was adopted in the experiments to eliminate the influence of the RC delay time on the measured responses. Our measurement results indicate that both single- and three-LED cascade structures have the same internal response time due to current continuity. Furthermore, based on responses measured under different temperatures (from 25°C to 200°C), the origin of the efficiency droop in GaN-based green LEDs under a high bias current density may be attributed to the strong nonradiative Auger effect rather than device heating or carrier overflow. The demonstrated measurement scheme and high-speed cascade device structure offer a novel and simple way to straightforwardly investigate the internal carrier dynamic inside the active layers of the LED during forward-bias operation.