High-temperature performance of InGaN-based amber micro-light-emitting diodes using an epitaxial tunnel junction contact

This study investigated the temperature-dependent electroluminescent (EL) performance of InGaN-based amber micro-light-emitting diodes (μLEDs) with a diameter of 40 μm using an epitaxial tunnel junction (TJ) contact for current spreading. The TJ-μLEDs could achieve a high electrical efficiency of 0.935 and a remarkable wall-plug efficiency of 4.3% at 1 A/cm2 at room temperature, indicating an excellent current injection efficiency of the TJ layers regrown by molecular beam epitaxy. Moreover, the current injection of the amber TJ-μLEDs at the forward bias could be further improved at elevated temperatures. The improvement can be explained by the enhanced tunneling probability and acceptor ionization in p-GaN based on the theoretical simulation. The redshift coefficient, which describes the temperature-dependent peak wavelength shift, is obtained as small as 0.05 nm/K, and the high-temperature-to-room-temperature EL intensity ratio is calculated as >0.56 even at a low current density of 0.5 A/cm2 at the temperatures up to 80 °C. This thermal droop behavior was attributed to the enhanced non-radiative recombination, which was confirmed by the shorter carrier lifetime measured at high temperatures.