GaN-Based Light-Emitting Diodes: Efficiency at High Injection Levels

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have become quite a high-performance device of late and are revolutionizing the display and illumination sectors of our economy. Due to demands for better performance and reduced energy consumption there is a constant race towards converting every single electron hole pair in the device to photons and extracting them as well while using only the minimum required voltage. This raises the bar on GaN-based LEDs in terms of elimination of nonradiative recombination processes not just at low but just as importantly if not more at very high injection levels needed for high brightness sources, and design of heterostructures for efficient electron and hole recombination without carrier loss and voltage/photon energy conversion loss. The haunting efficiency droop observed in GaN-based LEDs at high injection levels has been attributed to nonradiative Auger recombination, but can be simply explained by electron spillover. Investigations of quantum well (QW) InGaN LED structures with different barrier heights, widths, and doping suggest that limited hole transport in the active region and the resulting electron spillover is responsible for efficiency droop at high injection levels. In this paper, highly critical, demanding, and challenging nature of high-efficiency high-brightness LEDs, in particular the basics surrounding the internal quantum efficiency of LED structures and the ongoing research/development, will be discussed.