Improved performance of lateral GaN-based light emitting diodes with novel buried CBL structure in ITO film and reflective electrodes

Abstract In this letter, lateral GaN-based Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) with a SiO 2 current blocking layer (CBL) buried in the indium tin oxide (ITO) film and highly reflective metal materials have been proposed. Compared with the conventional CBL structure which was inserted between ITO film and p-type GaN, simulation results showed that LEDs with a buried CBL in the ITO film effectively facilitated current spreading under the CBL. We demonstrated that buried CBL was beneficial for suppressing current crowding (CC) effect around the edge of CBL and may facilitate higher LED efficiency. Furthermore, experimental results showed that LEDs with the buried structure we proposed showed lower working voltage and higher light output power (LOP) compared with those with conventional CBL structure. These results further confirmed that the buried CBL scheme was effective to reduce current crowding (CC) effect. In addition, highly reflective metal materials of Cr/Al/Pt/Au were employed to reduce light absorption and achieve high light extraction efficiency.