Development of 260 nm band deep-ultraviolet light emitting diodes on Si substrates

Deep-ultraviolet (DUV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have a wide range of potential applications, such as sterilization, water purification, and medicine. In recent years, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) and the performance of AlGaNbased DUV LEDs on sapphire substrates have increased markedly due to improvements in the crystalline-quality of high Al-content AlGaN layers, and the optimization of LED structures. On the other hand, DUV LEDs fabricated on Si substrates are very promising as a low-cost DUV light-source in the near future. However, AlN layers on Si have suffered from cracking induced by the large mismatch in lattice constants and thermal expansion coefficients between AlN and Si. In this paper, DUV LEDs on Si were realized by a combination of a reduction in the number of cracks and of the threading dislocation density (TDD) of AlN templates by using the epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) method. The ELO-AlN templates were successfully coalesced on trench-patterned substrates, with the stripes running along the <1-100> direction of AlN. The density of cracks was greatly reduced in 4- μm-thick ELO-AlN templates, because voids formed by the ELO process relaxed the tensile stress in the AlN layer. Furthermore, the AlN templates showed low-TDD. The full-width-at-half-maximum values of the (0002) and (10-12) X-ray rocking curves were 780 and 980 arcsec, respectively. DUV LEDs fabricated on these high-quality ELO-AlN/Si substrates showed single peak emission at 256- 278 nm in electroluminescence measurements. It is expected that we will be able to realize low-cost DUV LEDs on Si substrates by using ELO-AlN templates.