Improved emission efficiency of a-plane GaN light emitting diodes with silica nano-spheres integrated into a-plane GaN buffer layer

Abstract

A simple and inexpensive technique to improve the emission efficiency of nonpolar a-plane light emitting diodes (LEDs) is proposed. The 3-dimensional growth nature of a-plane GaN was utilized to form the regrowth template of a-plane GaN. Subsequently, the controlled integration of silica nano-spheres (CIS) into the regrowth template is performed to improve the crystal quality of a-plane GaN by epitaxial lateral overgrowth method. In addition, the CIS improves light extraction by the scattering process. The light output power from the CIS a-plane GaN LEDs showed 130%-150% increase compared to that of LED without silica nano-spheres.