Enhanced Light Output of UVA GaN Vertical LEDs With Novel DBR Mirrors

The emission efficiency of GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) decreases significantly as the emission wavelength is shorter than 370 nm because of the absorption of emission light in the GaN layers. The vertical LED structure could be applied to avoid the absorption problem, because the undoped GaN layer would be removed and the n-GaN layer could be thinned as much as possible in the fabrication process. In this report, we propose a novel ultraviolet (UV) LED structure with a thin indium-tin-oxide (ITO) layer as the ohmic contact and a dielectric distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) as the high reflectivity mirror. Comparing referenced vertical UV LED structures with ITO/Ag as the metal mirror, the vertical UV LED with the ITO/DBR mirror shows the output power of approximately 190 mW at 350 mA with 7.9% enhancement.