Study on the Degradation Performance of AlGaN-Based Deep Ultraviolet LEDs under Thermal and Electrical Stress

AlGaN-based deep-ultraviolet (DUV) LEDs could realize higher optical power output when adopting a p-AlGaN contact layer instead of a p-GaN contact layer. However, this new type DUV LEDs exhibit poor reliability. Thus, this study thoroughly investigates the degradation behaviors of AlGaN-based DUV LEDs with a p-AlGaN contact layer through different aging tests, including single thermal stress, single electrical stress with air-cooling, single electrical stress, and thermoelectric complex stress. It can be found that both high temperature and large working current play crucial roles in accelerating the degradation of optoelectronic properties of the DUV LEDs, and the single high thermal stress without electrical stress can also bring obvious performance degradation to the DUV LEDs, which is a significantly different finding from previous studies. This is because thermal stress on DUV LED could bring some metal electrode elements entering the p-AlGaN layer. Thus, the degradation of optical and electrical properties under the thermal and electrical stress could be not only attributed to the degradation of the device’s ohmic contacts, but also due to the metal electrode elements entering the p-AlGaN layer through thermal diffusion, leading to the generation of tunneling current and the generation of defects within or around the active region. Despite that the peak wavelengths of the DUV LEDs remained stable, the turn-on voltage and series resistance increased. Particularly worth mentioning is that the value of the optical power degradation under thermoelectric conditions is larger than the sum of the single thermal and single electrical optical power degradation, which is a result of the mutual reinforcement of thermal and electrical stresses to exacerbate the defect generation and ohmic contact degradation. Based on the study above, preparing p-AlGaN layers with hyperfine gradient aluminum fractions and reducing the junction temperature may help to improve the reliability of AlGaN-based DUV LEDs with the p-AlGaN contact layer.