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The electrical properties of GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) fabricated with indium–tin-oxide (ITO) p-contacts were investigated as functions of the thickness of the (In)GaN contact layers and the In content. The LEDs with the GaN contact layers showed lower forward voltages (in the range of 3.48–3.03 V) than the LEDs with ITO-only contacts (4.2 V); the forward voltages of the LEDs decreased with increasing contact layer thickness (from 1–4 nm) and increasing In content. However, the output power linearly decreased with increasing In content, whereas that of the GaN contact layer LEDs became saturated at a thickness of 2 nm. The X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) Ga 2p core level for the samples with the contact layers was shifted toward lower binding energies by 0.11–0.22 eV compared with that of the sample without the contact layer. However, the energy shift decreased with increasing In content. Unlike the contact-layer samples, the sample without the contact layer experienced outdiffusion of N atoms. Based on the XPS and atomic force microscopy results, the contact-layer-induced electrical improvement was described and discussed.

We investigated the effect of step-down indium content in InGaN quantum wells (QWs) on the output efficiency of fully packaged InGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Both the reference and step-down LED chips give maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQE) of 54.65 and 54.99% at a current density of 4.17 A/cm2, respectively. Step-down LEDs show a lower efficiency droop than reference LEDs. The step-down LEDs exhibit a 5.3% higher EQE at 83.3 A/cm2 than the reference LEDs. As the current density increases from 1.39 to 9.03 A/cm2, the electroluminescence (EL) intensity peaks of the step-down LEDs are slightly more shifted towards the larger energy side than those of the reference LEDs. The polarization field is estimated to be 1.34 and 1.41 MV/cm for the reference and step-down LEDS, respectively. The simulated internal quantum efficiency results of the reference and step-down LEDs are in agreement with the experimental results. The simulation results show that the step-down LEDs have higher hole injection efficiency than the reference LEDs. On the basis of the simulation results, the blue-shift behavior of the reference and step-down LEDs is described and discussed.

We report on the formation of current blocking regions by O2 plasma treatment to reduce current crowding at the active region above the p-type electrodes of GaN-based vertical light emitting diodes (LEDs). The forward voltage and reverse current (at -5 V) of the plasma-treated LEDs slightly increase with increasing aging time. The output power (at 350 mA) of the plasma-treated LEDs is enhanced by 26% as compared to that of reference LEDs and is comparable to that of LEDs with SiO2 current blocking layers. It is shown that the output power (at 700 mA) of the plasma-treated LEDs is degraded by less than 2% of the initial value after 500 h.