Surface plasmon-enhanced light-emitting diodes with silver nanoparticles and SiO2 nano-disks embedded in p-GaN

We report the fabrication and characterization of surface plasmon (SP)-enhanced blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with Ag nanoparticles and SiO2 nano-disks embedded in the p-GaN layer. Compared with LEDs without Ag nanoparticles, the optical output power increases for the SP-enhanced LEDs with and without SiO2 nano-disks are 72% and 49%, respectively. The greater increase in optical output power for the SP-enhanced LEDs with SiO2 nano-disks compared with SP-enhanced LEDs without SiO2 nano-disks can be attributed to the SiO2 nano-disks in the p-GaN layer, which reduce the Ag nanoparticle-induced defects and enhance the light extraction efficiency of the LEDs.