1368 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 35, No.

9 / May 1, 2010

Advantages of blue InGaN light-emitting diodes

with AlGaN barriers
Jih-Yuan Chang,1 Miao-Chan Tsai,2 and Yen-Kuang Kuo1,*
1
Department of Physics, National Changhua University of Education, Changhua 500, Taiwan
2
Institute of Photonics, National Changhua University of Education, Changhua 500, Taiwan
*Corresponding author: ykuo@cc.ncue.edu.tw
Received March 1, 2010; revised March 24, 2010; accepted March 25, 2010;
posted April 1, 2010 (Doc. ID 124837); published April 23, 2010
The advantages of blue InGaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with AlGaN barriers are studied numerically.
The performance curves, energy band diagrams, electrostatic fields, and carrier concentrations are investi-
gated. The simulation results show that the InGaN / AlGaN LED has better performance than its conven-
tional InGaN / GaN counterpart owing to the increase of hole injection and the enhancement of electron con-
finement. The simulation results also suggest that the efficiency droop is markedly improved when the
traditional GaN barriers are replaced by AlGaN barriers. © 2010 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: 230.0250, 230.3670, 230.5590.

The InGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have
been commercialized and widely used in backlight-
ing, general illumination, and other applications
[1,2]. Nevertheless, the efficiency droop is still a seri-
ous restriction for high-power applications [3–6]. As a
result, the performance enhancement under high
current injection becomes an important issue and
arouses massive interests in recent years. Even
though a plethora of research has been published
[3,4,6–8], the mechanism of efficiency droop is not
very clear, and hence there is no effective method to
completely solve this problem.
Among the numerous suggestions, the insufficient
injection efficiency of carriers and thereby nonuni-
form carrier distributions may play an important role
for this issue. For GaN-based devices, the holes have
a relatively high effective mass and therefore a very
low mobility. In addition, the electron blocking layer
(EBL) is found to act as a potential barrier also for
holes. To sum up, the holes are more difficult to
transport into and between the quantum wells
(QWs). It has been reported that a large amount of
holes accumulate in the last QW next to the p-type
region, and therefore almost only this well contrib-
utes to radiative recombination in the InGaN LEDs
[8–10].
One possible factor that can influence the hole in-
jection efficiency is the height of the effective poten-
tial barrier for holes in the valence band. To investi-
gate this topic, the optical and electrical properties of
an InGaN multi-quantum-well (MQW) LED with Al-
GaN barriers are studied numerically in this Letter,
which is compared with the conventional one with
GaN barriers. The use of the AlGaN barrier instead
of GaN barrier can diminish the polarization charges
accumulated in the last-barrier/EBL interface, which
accordingly can relax the band bending of EBL. Ow-
ing to the above phenomenon, the effective potential
barrier height for holes in the valence band de-
creases, and hence the transportation of holes into
the active region becomes easier. In the meantime,
the ability of electron confinement in the last-barrier/
EBL interface does not degrade under this variation.
0146-9592/10/091368-3/$15.00
As a result, it is expected that the efficiency of hole
injection can be enhanced for the structure with Al-
GaN barriers without the cost in reduction of elec-
tron confinement.
The above issues are theoretically studied in detail
by using the APSYS simulation program [11] by solv-
ing the Poisson’s equation, current continuity equa-
tions, carrier transport equation, quantum mechani-
cal wave equation, and photon rate equation. The
structure of the original blue LED used as a refer-
ence is identical to an already existing actual device.
This LED was grown on a c-plane sapphire substrate,
followed by a GaN buffer layer, and a 4.5-␮m-thick
n-GaN layer 共n-doping= 5 ⫻ 1018 cm−3兲. The active re-
gion consisted of five 2-nm-thick In0.21Ga0.79N QWs,
separated by six 15-nm-thick GaN (or Al0.05Ga0.95N
for new-designed structure) barriers. On top of the
active region was a 20-nm-thick p-Al0.15Ga0.85N EBL
and a 0.5-␮m-thick p-GaN cap layer 共p-doping= 1.2
⫻ 1018 cm−3兲. The device geometry was designed with
a rectangular shape of 300 ␮m ⫻ 300 ␮m. To simplify
the simulation, the light extraction efficiency is as-
sumed to be 0.78. The simulation results of the struc-
ture for reference show very good agreement with the
experimental data, which demonstrates the reliabil-
ity of our simulation [10]. The Shockley-Read-Hall
(SRH) recombination lifetime and internal loss are
the key parameters used to fit the simulation result
with the experimental result. In this work, the SRH
recombination lifetime and internal loss are set to be
0.1− 3.9 ns and 3500 m−1, respectively. Other mate-
rial parameters of the semiconductors used in the
simulation can be found in [12].
The electrical and optical performances of the
InGaN / GaN and InGaN / AlGaN structures are com-
pared in Fig. 1. It is apparent that the InGaN / AlGaN
structure has lower turn-on voltage, higher internal
quantum efficiency (IQE), and output power in the
whole range of current injection under study. In other
words, the overall performance of the InGaN / AlGaN
structure is superior to that of InGaN / GaN one. As
for the degree of efficiency droop, defined by the for-
mula 共IQEmax − IQEmin兲 / IQEmax, the efficiency droop
© 2010 Optical Society of America

Fig. 1. (Color online) (a) Light-current-voltage, (b) IQE
performance curves of the InGaN / GaN and InGaN / AlGaN
structures.
is 0.56 (0.29) for the structure with GaN
共Al0.05Ga0.95N兲 barriers. Thus, the efficiency droop is
markedly improved when the traditional GaN barri-
ers are replaced by AlGaN barriers. It is worth noting
that, as the IQE curves indicate, the performance of
the InGaN / AlGaN structure is good at low-injection
current. For example, when the current ranges from
13 to 60 mA, the IQE has a value of higher than 90%.
More discussions about this phenomenon are in-
cluded below.
Besides the potential difference of the band energy
in barriers, the degree of polarization effect near ac-
tive region is another major influence for the use of
the AlGaN barriers. The built-in charge density in-
duced by spontaneous and piezoelectric polarizations
within the interface of the InGaN LEDs can be calcu-
lated by the method developed by Fiorentini et al.
[13]. In this study, considering the screening caused
by the defects, the surface charge density is assumed
to be 40% of the calculated value, which is a typical
value adopted by several researchers. Besides, the
charge density screened by the injected charge carri-
ers is determined self-consistently at different levels
of current injection. For the InGaN / AlGaN structure,
as compared with the InGaN / GaN structure, the po-
larization induced surface charge density in the well-
barrier interface increases (±8.93⫻ 1016 m−2 versus
±8.17⫻ 1016 m−2), while that in the last-barrier/EBL
interface decreases (1.66⫻ 1016 m−2 versus 2.42
⫻ 1016 m−2), which is consistent with our previous
analysis.
Figure 2 shows the electrostatic fields near the last
three QWs and EBL at 150 mA. Similar to the theo-
retical calculation, the simulation results show that
there are stronger electrostatic fields in the active re-
gion for the InGaN / AlGaN structure, which may
lead to the situation of band bending, poor overlap of
electron and hole wave functions, and hence reduced
radiative recombination rate. Note that the last QW
next to the p-type region does not show the same ten-
dency. Inside this QW, the electrostatic field is lower
than other QWs, which may be due to the large
screening effect induced by the huge amount of car-
riers accumulated in this last QW. Furthermore, the
weaker electrostatic fields around the last-barrier/
EBL interface are also observed for the
InGaN / AlGaN structure. For this reason, the
polarization-induced downward band bending in the
last-barrier/EBL interface is mitigated, and there
May 1, 2010 / Vol. 35, No. 9 / OPTICS LETTERS 1369
Fig. 2. (Color online) Electrostatic fields near last three
QWs and EBL of the InGaN / GaN and InGaN / AlGaN
structures at 150 mA (gray regions represent the location
of QWs).
should be more holes that can be injected into the ac-
tive region.
These phenomena can be explained by the energy
band diagrams shown in Fig. 3. As shown in Figs. 3(c)
and 3(d), the effective potential height for holes in
the valence band of the InGaN / AlGaN structure is
lower than that of the InGaN / GaN one (i.e., 0.255 eV
versus 0.282 eV) owing to the slighter polarization ef-
fect in the last-barrier/EBL interface. Hence, it
should have better hole injection efficiency. Simulta-
neously, more electrons can stay in the QWs and re-
combine with holes. Thus, fewer electrons will escape
outside the active region and overflow to the p-type
layers. Besides, as shown in Fig. 3(e) and 3(f), the ef-
fective potential height for the electrons in the con-
duction band of the InGaN / AlGaN structure becomes
higher than the other structure (i.e., 0.367 eV versus
0.355 eV), which denotes the enhancement of elec-
tron confinement. The enhancement of the ability for
electron confinement in InGaN / AlGaN structure can
also be found in Fig. 3. The potential difference be-
tween the conduction band edge and its relative
quasi-Fermi level of the p-GaN layer near the EBL is
larger than that of the InGaN / GaN structure. Thus,
fewer electrons overflow to the p-type region for the
InGaN / AlGaN structure.
Figure 4 shows the carrier concentrations of
InGaN / GaN and InGaN / AlGaN structures near the
active region at 150 mA. It is evident that most car-
riers accumulate in the last QW for both structures.
Ascribing to the enhancement of hole injection and
electron confinement, there are more carriers in the
active region for the InGaN / AlGaN structure, which
results in better electrical and optical performance.
For the InGaN / AlGaN structure, the situation that
most carriers accumulated in the last QW will cause
two important influences. One is that the large elec-
trostatic fields inside the last QW would be compen-
sated by the strong screening effect owing to the huge
amount of carriers, as indicated previously in Fig. 2.
As a result, the recombination efficiency of the last
QW in the InGaN / AlGaN structure will not be as bad
as that predicted at first. Another influence is that,
because of the severe accumulation of carriers, the
capacity of carrier confinement inside the last QW
1370 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 35, No. 9 / May 1, 2010
Fig. 3. (Color online) Energy band diagrams of (a)
InGaN / GaN and (b) InGaN / AlGaN structures at 150 mA.
Enlarged drawings of the valence band near EBL of the (c)
InGaN / GaN and (d) InGaN / AlGaN structures. Enlarged
drawings of the conduction band near EBL of the (e)
InGaN / GaN and (f) InGaN / AlGaN structures.
might not be sufficient at high injection current, es-
pecially for the InGaN / AlGaN structure, owing to
the band-filling effect. This is the main reason for the
degradation of optical performance of the
InGaN / AlGaN structure under high current injec-
tion.
In conclusion, AlGaN barriers are proposed to be
used in the blue InGaN MQW LEDs. The simulation
results show that when the traditional GaN barriers
are replaced by the AlGaN barriers, the carrier injec-
tion is enhanced and the electron current leakage is
reduced, which in turn result in the improvement of
overall performance of the proposed InGaN / AlGaN
Fig. 4. (Color online) Carrier concentrations of the (a)
InGaN / GaN and (b) InGaN / AlGaN structures near active
region at 150 mA
structure. The physical origin for the performance
improvement is due mainly to the smaller effective
potential height for holes, which is induced by the re-
duced surface charge density in the last-barrier/EBL
interface.
The authors are grateful to Dr. Jen-De Chen for the
technical assistance. This work is supported by the
National Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan under
grant NSC 96-2112-M-018-007-MY3.
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