Tunnel junction enhanced nanowire ultraviolet light emitting diodes

Polarization engineered interband tunnel junctions (TJs) are integrated in nanowire ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes (LEDs). A ∼6 V reduction in turn-on voltage is achieved by the integration of tunnel junction at the base of polarization doped nanowire UV LEDs. Moreover, efficient hole injection into the nanowire LEDs leads to suppressed efficiency droop in TJ integrated nanowire LEDs. The combination of both reduced bias voltage and increased hole injection increases the wall plug efficiency in these devices. More than 100 μW of UV emission at ∼310 nm is measured with external quantum efficiency in the range of 4–6 m%. The realization of tunnel junction within the nanowire LEDs opens a pathway towards the monolithic integration of cascaded multi-junction nanowire LEDs on silicon.

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