Extracting light out of LEDs

Abstract ‘External quantum efficiency’, that is, the number of photons generated per electron passing through the p-n junction of an LED is probably the most important number to quantify the performance of an LED chip. Although advances in epitaxy have increased the fraction of radiative recombination to extremely high values, the extraction of the precious photons that are trapped in a high refractive index crystal is still tricky. In this brief tutorial, we look at the physics of light extraction both from a geometrical optics/thermodynamic and a wave optics point of view, discussing both random and deterministic surface structures.