Effects of lateral current injection in GaN multi-quantum well light-emitting diodes

In conventional multi-quantum well (MQW) LEDs, typically only one QW emits light due to a very nonuniform carrier distribution. We show by numerical simulations that by adopting a genuinely two-dimensional LED structure enabling lateral hole current injection into the QWs it becomes possible to achieve a more even carrier distribution potentially enabling smaller droop and uniform light emission from all the QWs in the MQW stack. We also show that the uneven emission may be explained with standard current transport models as quasi-Fermi losses between successive quantum wells. We demonstrate our findings by studying three different LED structures and comparing our results to published experimental results.