Efficiency and radiative recombination rate enhancement in GaN/AlGaN multi-quantum well-based electron blocking layer free UV-LED for improved luminescence

Abstract

In this paper, an electron blocking layer (EBL) free GaN/AlGaN light emitting diode (LED) is designed using Atlas TCAD with graded composition in the quantum barriers of the active region. The device has a GaN buffer layer incorporated in a c-plane for better carrier transportation and low efficiency droop. The proposed LED has quantum barriers with aluminium composition graded from 20% to ~2% per triangular, whereas the conventional has square barriers. The resulted structures exhibit significantly reduced electron leakage and improved hole injection into the active region, thus generating higher radiative recombination. The simulation outcomes exhibit the highest internal quantum efficiency (IQE) (48.4%) indicating a significant rise compared to the conventional LED. The designed EBL free LED with graded quantum barrier structure acquires substantially minimized efficiency droop of ~7.72% at 60 mA. Our study shows that the proposed structure has improved radiative recombination by ~136.7%, reduced electron leakage, and enhanced optical power by ~8.084% at 60 mA injected current as compared to conventional GaN/AlGaN EBL LED structure.