III-Nitride-Based Devices Grown On Thin Template On Thermally Decomposed Material

Micron-sized (less than 100 μm²) InGaN-based LEDs are well regarded as the future of display technology due to their high wall plug efficiency and wide color gamut compared to conventional alternatives. Despite the technology’s promising outlook, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) of long wavelength InGaN-based LEDs is lacking. Maintaining high efficiency requires an increased Indium content, but the fabrication parameters and composition pulling effect pose substantial barriers. Solutions have surfaced to address this issue, but they are found to be time consuming and still fall short of desired results.

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have developed highly efficient III-nitride devices with high-quality, long-wavelength active regions. This technology relaxes a large-area buffer layer across an entire substrate in a single growth with no other processing required. A high growth temperature of 870°C improves Indium incorporation and results in the highest-available crystal quality of InGaN and AlGaN layers; nearly three times higher than current market offerings. This technology has much higher relaxation (85%) across the whole area of the InGaN layer grown on a 2-inch substrate compared to traditionally relaxed regions that are less than 10 μm². This simpler cost-effective approach to growing smaller LED and LDs in a single MOCVD step can be applied to any III-nitride devices, such as electronic devices, high frequency devices, HEMTs, FETs, various detectors, and even solar cells.