GaN-based light-emitting diodes suitable for white light

High-efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs) emitting red, amber, green, blue and ultraviolet light have been obtained through the use of an InGaN active layers. The localized energy states caused by In composition fluctuation in the InGaN active layer seem to be related to the high efficiency of the InGaN-based emitting devices in spite of having a large number of threading dislocations (TDs). InGaN single-quantum-well-structure blue LEDs were grown on epitaxially laterally overgrown GaN (ELOG) and sapphire substrates. The characteristics of both LEDs was almost same. These results indicate that the dislocation doesn't affect the efficiency practically. Recently, the development of high-power light source using GaN-based LEDs has become active. In such high-power LEDs, the density of forward current is much higher than that of past LEDs. Therefore, an advantage of carrier localization in InGaN active layer becomes small, because of band filling under high injection level. This means that reducing the density of TDs becomes important, just like GaN-based laser diodes. Also, we show recent results of GaN-based LEDs.