Dominance of tunneling current and band filling in InGaN/AlGaN double heterostructure blue light-emitting diodes

Measurement of the room temperature forward bias current-voltage behavior of InGaN/AlGaN double heterostructure blue light-emitting diodes demonstrates a significant departure from the usual Is exp(qV/ nkT) behavior where n is the ideality factor which varies between 1 and 2. The observed current-voltage behavior at room temperature may be represented as I=2.7×10−11 exp(5.7V) which suggests a tunneling mechanism. Measurement of the electroluminescence for currents from 0.5 to 100 mA demonstrates that the emission peak shifts to higher energy while increasing in intensity. The shifting peak spectra is due to band filling, a process which results from the injection of holes via tunneling into an empty acceptor impurity band and vacant valence band tails. At currents near 100 mA, a non-shifting band-to-band emission approaches the intensity of the shifting peak spectra. The active layer of these diodes is codoped with both the donor Si and the acceptor Zn.