Van der Waals epitaxy of GaN-based light-emitting diodes on wet-transferred multilayer graphene film

We experimentally investigated the possibility of using multilayer graphene to solve large mismatch problems between sapphire and nitride and further studied the effects of a multilayer graphene interlayer on the optical and electrical properties of LEDs. For the subsequent growth of 3-µm-thick GaN on AlN, multilayer graphene helps release stress and effectively removes cracks. In addition, multilayer graphene increases the diffraction of the substrate surface as determined from the increase in optical transmittance spectra in the wavelength range of 400–900 nm. Although the crystalline quality of GaN with multilayer graphene is slightly decreased, LEDs grown on multilayer graphene still show a higher output power than those grown on conventional sapphire. The present findings showed that the multilayer graphene layer is attractive as a potential substrate for the epitaxial growth of III–nitride to reduce stress and it could improve back light extraction as a rough layer to increase external quantum efficiency.