Remote plasma chemical vapour deposition of group III-nitride tunnel junctions for LED applications

The low growth temperature technology Remote Plasma Chemical Vapour Deposition (RPCVD) is currently being developed by BluGlass Ltd. for use in high-brightness LED applications. The unique growth conditions of RPCVD are demonstrated to produce Activated As-Grown (AAG) buried p-GaN for achieving GaN-based tunnel junctions (TJ) for use in current spreading and potential use in cascade LED and LD applications. Hybrid RPCVD/MOCVD TJs were grown on commercial full blue LEDs, and all-RPCVD TJs were grown on commercial partially completed blue LEDs and the devices were processed into 1.1 mm x 1.1mm chips. The LEDs with hybrid TJ displayed a 4.4% increase in light output power (LOP) and an increase in forward voltage (Vf) of 0.68 V compared to LEDs using indium-tin oxide (ITO) at a current density of 26 A/cm2 . The LEDs with all-RPCVD TJs displayed a 3.6% increase in LOP and an increase in Vf of 0.88 V at 26 A/cm2 .