Chin. Phys. B Vol. 24, No. 3 (2015) 038503
Performance improvement of GaN-based light-emitting diodes
transferred from Si (111) substrate onto electroplating
Cu submount with embedded wide p-electrodes
∗
Liu Ming-Gang(柳铭岗)
†
, Wang Yun-Qian(王云茜)
†
, Yang Yi-Bin(杨亿斌)
†
,
Lin Xiu-Qi(林秀其), Xiang Peng(向 鹏), Chen Wei-Jie(陈伟杰), Han Xiao-Biao(韩小标),
Zang Wen-Jie(臧文杰), Liao Qiang(廖 强), Lin Jia-Li(林佳利), Luo Hui(罗 慧),
Wu Zhi-Sheng(吴志盛), Liu Yang(刘 扬), and Zhang Bai-Jun(张佰君)
‡
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
(Received 30 July 2014; revised manuscript received 20 October 2014; published online 30 January 2015)
Crack-free GaN/InGaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are transferred from Si sub-
strate onto electroplating Cu submount with embedded wide p-electrodes. The vertical-conducting n-side-up configuration
of the LED is achieved by using the through-hole structure. The widened embedded p-electrode covers almost the whole
transparent conductive layer (TCL), which could not be applied in the conventional p-side-up LEDs due to the electrode-
shading effect. Therefore, the widened p-electrode improves the current spreading property and the uniformity of lumi-
nescence. The working voltage and series resistance are thereby reduced. The light output of embedded wide p-electrode
LEDs on Cu is enhanced by 147% at a driving current of 350 mA, in comparison to conventional LEDs on Si.
Keywords: light-emitting diodes, embedded wide p-electrodes, Si substrate, electroplating Cu submount
PACS: 85.60.Jb, 61.72.uj, 82.45.Qr DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/24/3/038503
1. Introduction
Over the last two decades, GaN-based LEDs on sap-
phire and SiC substrates have been applied in many fields,
such as displays, traffic signals, automotive lighting, and back-
lights. This is due to the rapid development of the LED
technologies.
[1–13]
Specifically, the progress in achieving in-
ternal quantum efficiency improvement and radiative effi-
ciency enhancement,
[2,14,15]
hole transport improvement and
efficiency-droop suppression in the LEDs leading to practical
applications,
[16–21]
and the deep understanding of Auger pro-
cess in nitride LEDs
[22,23]
have been the driving force in ad-
vancing the technologies. In order to further reduce the cost of
LEDs and replace traditional lamps, the LEDs on Si substrates
have attracted considerable interest, owing to many good prop-
erties of Si such as low cost, large scale, high quality, low hard-
ness, and good thermal conductivity and electrical conduction.
Although GaN-based LEDs on Si substrates have been ex-
tensively studied and their performances have been improved
greatly, the volume production remains difficult mainly due
to the stress problems between GaN and Si substrate and the
optical absorption by the opaque Si substrate. The stress prob-
lems can be partially solved by using graded AlGaN buffer
layers
[24,25]
and AlN/GaN superlattices.
[26,27]
In order to im-
prove the light efficiency, inserting a distributed Bragg reflec-
tor (DBR) between the active layer of LED and the substrate is
an easy and effective method for reducing the absorption of Si
substrate.
[28–30]
However, because of the tensile stress and the
crack formation, only a few pairs of DBRs are available to be
deposited on Si substrates in the premise of crackfree, which
results in lower reflectivity. Moreover, only a given light po-
larization impinging near the normal direction to the DBR
structure can be effectively reflected.
[31]
In addition, DBRs are
usually applied in conventional p-side-up LEDs, which cannot
eliminate the shadow effect by p-electrodes.
[32]
Therefore, the
Si substrate transferring technique
[33–40]
is mainly adopted to
eliminate the absorption of Si substrates and shadow effect,
by inserting a metallic reflector. For instance, in our pre-
vious work,
[40]
we presented the embedded electrode LEDs
(EE-LEDs) transferred from Si substrate onto Cu submount,
which enhances the light output by 122%. However, since the
p-electrode is much narrower than the TCL and the thin TCL
presents lateral resistance, it leads to current crowding near the
p-electrode,
[40,41]
which would also aggravates the shadow ef-
fect in the conventional p-side-up LEDs. This current crowd-
ing adversely affects the uniformity and stability of the light
emission.
[42]
Moreover, the current crowding also causes op-
tical saturation, decrease in the efficiency of light generation,
and degradation in the reliability of LEDs, due to the high-
electrical carrier density in a localized area of the device.
[43]
∗
Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61274039 and 51177175), the National Basic Research Program of China
(Grant Nos. 2010CB923201 and 2011CB301903), the Ph.D. Program Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 20110171110021), and the
Foundation of the Key Technologies R&D Program of Guangdong Province, China (Grant No. 2010A081002005).
†
These authors contributed equally to this work.
‡
Corresponding author. E-mail: zhbaij@mail.sysu.edu.cn
© 2015 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd http://iopscience.iop.org/cpb http://cpb.iphy.ac.cn
038503-1