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4, APRIL 2013
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I. INTRODUCTION
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Fig. 1. RT-PL spectra of the optimized Mg-delta-doped and Mg-uniformlydoped layers. The inset shows the schematic diagram of the Mg-delta-doping
process.
Fig. 2. - characteristics of LED I and LED II. The inset shows the schematic
structure of the LED I.
Fig. 3. (a) AFM images of the wet-chemical etched surfaces of (a) LED I and
areas.
(b) LED II epi-structures over 10 10
Fig. 4. - characteristics of the LED I and LED II. The inset (a) shows the
output power ratio of LED I to LED II. The inset (b) shows schematic band
structure of hole-injection region in LED I.
acid (
) was employed to treat the surfaces. The dislocation density was evaluated by counting etch pits. Fig. 3
shows the AFM images (10 10
) revealing the etching
pits on the surfaces of LED I and LED II after the wet etching.
It was observed that there are two kinds of etch pits on the
surface of LED II. One kind is large hexagonal shape with
diameter about 700 nm, and the other is small dark dots with
diameters in range of
. The density of small dark
. AFM images over 2 2
scan
dots was
areas verified that the shape of small dark dots is also inverted
hexagonal pyramid. For the etched surface of LED I type
structure, the density of small dark dots was 4
and
no large hexagonal pits could be found. It has been reported
that the small etch pits with inverted hexagonal pyramid shape
are related to the mixed and screw dislocations, while the large
hexagonal pits originate from open-core screw dislocation.
Therefore, the reduction of the small-size etch pits and the
disappearance of large-size pits in LED I indicates that the
inserted Mg-delta-doped layer can effectively block the screw
dislocations and hence improve the quality of the subsequent
p-GaN layer. The improved leakage current characteristics of
LED I can thus be attributed to the reduction of the screw dislocations, especially the open-core screw dislocations, which
are the main factor resulting in leakage current [42].
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Fig. 4 illustrates the light output power-current ( - ) characteristics of LED I and LED II. The - curves show that the light
output powers were obviously increased for LED I. At the injection current of 350 mA, the light outputs of LED I and LED II
are 88 mW and 78 mW, respectively. Accordingly, the LED I exhibits 13% improvement on the output power. The improvement
of light output power could be ascribed to the higher hole concentration in the Mg-delta-doped hole-injection layer leading to
an enhancement of the carrier injection. It was also found that
the light output power of LED I demonstrated larger enhancement under lower injection current condition. To clearly show
this phenomenon, the output power ratio of LED I to LED II is
plotted as a function of the injection current in the inset of Fig. 4.
.
At 50 mA, the output power improvement of LED I is
We suggest that such a trend of the output power improvement
may be due to the special band structure of LED I, as schematically illustrated in the insert of Fig. 4. The increment of Mg
ions concentration in the thin Mg-delta-doped region decreases
the Fermi level and raises the local conduction band [41]. The
delta-doped region with higher potential may serve as an electron blocking layer. At the low injection-current condition, the
inserted Mg-delta-doped layer can partially block the electron
overflow and thereby enhance the electron-hole radiative combination in the MQWs. At the high-injection current condition,
however, the delta-doped layer can no longer effectively block
the electrons due to the decreased potential difference between
the conduction bands of the last GaN barrier and the inserted
delta-doped layer, resulting in a reduction of the light output
improvement.
III. CONCLUSIONS
In summary, GaN/InGaN blue LEDs with a thin Mg-deltadoped hole-injection layer inserted at the end of the MQWs were
fabricated and characterized. The fabricated LEDs exhibited
that the light output power was obviously enhanced compared
to the LEDs without the inserted delta-doped layer, which is attributed to the high hole concentration achieved in the Mg-deltadoped layer. Leakage current characteristics were also significantly improved due to the dislocation suppression effect by
Mg-delta-doping process.
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Shanjin Huang received the B.S. degree in optical information science and
technology in 2008 from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, where he
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the School of Physics and Engineering.
Zhiyuan Zheng received the B.S. degree in optical information science and
technology in 2008 from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, where he
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the School of Physics and Engineering.
Zimin Chen, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.
259
Gang Wang, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.
Hao Jiang, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.