Spontaneous emission model of lateral light extraction from heterostructure light-emitting diodes

We investigate the extraction of light from semiconductor light-emitting diodes made of dielectric multilayer stacks with quantum-well sources. The model is a combination of a rigorous vertical model of dipole emission and an in-plane ray-tracing model. The vertical model is shown to conveniently provide the relevant horizontal decay length of the various kinds of in-plane propagating modes. The proposed combination of the two models accounts for the lateral extraction as well as light recycling in the active layers.