 Introduction

 Conventional lamps rely on either incandescence or discharge in gases

 In both process large energy loss occurs due to high temperature
 Light emission in semiconductor is due to radiative recombination of electrons
and holes
 Excess of electrons and holes are produced due to current injection
 This phenomenon, called injection luminescence is the basic of operation of all
light emitting diodes

 Injection Luminescence
 Electroluminescence is emission black body radiation excited by electric field
○ e.g. gas discharge
 The most efficient kind of electro luminescence is that caused by carrier injection
in semiconductor
 Since the invention of a red LED by Holonyak and Bevacqua (1962) the process
of injection luminescence received considerable attention.
 LED Performance
 An injection-electroluminescence device is characterized by its radiant efficiency
(also called wall-plug efficiency)

 Where, e ext f
ηext =external quantum efficiency
ηf = the feeding efficiency
 External quantum efficiency
○ External quantum efficiency is the ratio of number of photon emitted and the number of
electrons passed through the LED
○ Its also given by the product of injection, internal quantum and light extraction efficiency
Injection efficiency: The fraction of electrons passed through the LED that are injected
into the active region
Internal quantum efficiency: It is the ratio of the number of electron-hole pairs that recombined
radiatively to the total number of electron hole pair that
combine in the active region
Optical efficiency(light extraction efficiency): It is the fraction of the photons generated that
escape from the device
 Feeding efficiency
○ It is the ratio of the mean energy of the photon emitted and the total energy that and
electron-hole pair acquire from the power source when passing through the LED
 Radiative and Nonradiative recombination

 Excess carrier can combine radiatively and nonradiatively

 Competition between radiative and nonradiative recombination processes determine the
internal quantum efficiency of an LED
 Mechanism of radiative recombination is band-to-band transitions, in which an electron hole
pair recombines emitting a photon
 In nonradiative recombination the band-to-band transition result in heat energy
 The rate of radiative recombination is one of the crucial parameters for electroluminescent
materials.
 Radiative recombination

 In some alloys used for the fabrication of LED the non uniformity of the spatial distribution
of constituents may cause considerable fluctuation of the band potential
○ Carriers localized at such fluctuations has large probability to combine radiatively

 Other mechanism of radiative recombination are linked to impurities caused by defects

and/or by intentional or unintentional doping .
○ The impurity levels in the band gap trap free carriers that may contribute to photon emission
 Radiative recombination
 During radiative transition, the energy and momentum must be conserved
 In band to band transition the photonic energy equal to band gap energy is produced
 In transition involving excitations and impurity levels ,the mean photon energy is somewhat
lower
 Direct and Indirect gap Semiconductors
 Direct gap semiconductors eg. AlAs, GaN has the top of the valance band and the bottom
of the conduction band aligned in the same K-point
 They are thus capable of radiative recombination and as better suited for application in
optoelectronics and light-emitting deceives.
 Direct and Indirect gap Semiconductors

Indirect gap Semiconductors

 Indirect gap semiconductor eg. GaP, SiC where the band extrema are separated in the K
space
 Band to band transition requires third particle ( phonon, plasmon, or a carrier with
appropriate momentum) to facilitate the photon emission.
 The third particle process is of low probability and thus indirect gap semiconductors are
incapable of emitting light efficiently
 Radiative and Non radiative lifetime - The carrier lifetime (recombination
lifetime) is defined as the average time it takes an excess minority carrier to
recombine.

 Internal quantum efficiency is the decreasing function of temperature

 Non radiative lifetimes decrease with temperature

 Radiative lifetime increase with temperature

 The overall lifetime determines the characteristic response time of an LED

 Typical lifetimes in direct-gap materials used in high brightness LEDs are on the
nanosecond scale. Such LEDs can operate at frequencies of hundreds of mega-
hertz
 The basic element of LED is a semiconductor electroluminescent structure that comprises at
least a region of radiative recombination
 Region of different conductivity type (p and n) that supply the recombination carriers

 Homojunction
Simplest structure where a junction between a p-type & a n-type semiconductor of same kind
 This structure is somewhat obsolete and not used in modern high brightness LEDs
 Under zero bias condition the majority electrons from the n-region diffuse into the p-region
and holes diffuse in the opposite direction creating a depleted region.
 When voltage V is applied in the forward direction
○ the barrier of majority carrier decrease
○ enhancement of the diffusion due to the electric field injection, results in an excess density of
minority carriers on both side of junction
○ the injection carriers combine radiatively and nonradiatively
 Homojunction

 LEDs based on homojunction, light generated in the active region is reabsorbed

which reduces light extraction efficiency

 High internal quantum efficiency is attainable in only one conductive region

therefore a low injection level of holes into the n region is required
○ This can be achieved by high doping levels which results in increased reabsorption

 The injection efficiency of a homojunction LED range from 0.3 to 0.8

 P-N Heterostructures (single Heterostructures)

 A change in the material composition results in a change in the energy gap that enables one to
modify the potential profile
 Semiconductors having different band gaps due to different composition are called
heterostructures
 Using heterostructures improves injection and internal quantum efficiencies
 N-type region is transparent to photon generated in p-type region this minimizes the absorption
 Double Heterostructures
 Practical high brightness LEDs use a double heterostructure which implements the benefits
offered by band gap engineering to a large extent
 The structure comprises a narrow gap active p-type layer sandwiched between wide gap
conductive region of n and p types respectively
 This allows for bidirectional injection of excess carriers into the active layer where electron
and hole recombine
 The minority carrier that diffuse through one heterostructure is trapped in the active region of
the second heterostructure
 This increases the excess carrier density, consequently the rate of radiative recombination
 In such structure the, both conductive layer is transparent to the light emitted and the
reabsorption is minimum in both the cases
 Both SH and DH structure require materials with good lattice matching, high density of defects
may lead to nonradiative recombination
 Double Heterostructures
 In a double heterostructure thinning of active layer increases the rate of radiative
recombination and reduces reabsorption
 Further very thin active layers enables to overcome few lattice problems

 Quantum well structure

 When thinning of active layer becomes smaller than the de Broglie wavelength of electrons in the crystal the
energy spectrum of the carriers is modified.
 Such double heterostructure are called quantum well structures
 Single quantum well structures and multiple quantum well structures offer more versatile structures for high
brightness LEDs
 Quantum well structure
 Problem with the quantum well structure is because of high mobility of electrons they leak into
the p-type conductive layer without being captured by the quantum well state
 Usually to prevent the leakage of electrons into the p-type conductive layer and thus to
improve injection efficiency an Electron Blocking Layer(EBL) is introduced .
 EBL is created by introducing wide gap p-material between quantum well and p-conductive
layer
 IN QW structure the recombination current is determined by both radiative and nonradiative
transitions in the active layer and by nonradiative losses at the hetero surface
 Material requirements for LEDs
 Universal requirement is matching of the semiconductor bandgap energy with visible and
near-UV photon energy
○ However high rate of radiative recombination can be achieved only in semiconductors with direct
bandgap, the bandgap are sometimes compared with the relative sensitivity of human eye
 Other requirement is lattice robustness and high resistance in respect to the formation of
nonradiative recombination center
 There should also be possibility of tailoring the bandgap by allowing the arability of both p
and n-type and the possibility of fabricating heterostructure with predetermined potential
profile

○ Elementary semiconductors such as germanium, silicon and

carbon are indirect and don't meet the spectral region
requirement
○ Similarly AlSb, AlAs and AlP can emit in the visible region
but are not suitable for solid state lamp because of their
indirect gap
○ Direct gap compounds InP, GaAs, InN, and AlN have band
gape that that overlap the required spectral region and these
materials can form direct band alloys even with indirect gap
compounds
○ Alloys that contain a mixture of AL, Ga, and In cations and
one of As, P, or N anions are the bases of the present high-
brightness LED industry.
○ The three relevant systems are AlGaAs, AlGaInP and
AlInGaN
 AlGaAs(Aluminium gallium arsenide) material system

 Developed by Alferov in 1970 for laser diode (Nobel Prize in 2000)

 Lattice constant nearly the same to that of GaAs but larger bandgap
 Direct gap metarial is avilable for the far-red to near IR region
 AlGaInP (Aluminium gallium indium phosphide) metarial system

 ALGaInP almost lattice-matched with GaAs

 Direct-gap material is available for the red to amber region
 Developed by NEC and Toshiba in late 1980s for DVD lasers
 AlInGaN (Aluminum indium gallium nitride) material system

 Direct-gap material is available in the near-IR to UV region

 Electon blocking layer in AlInGaN material system is formed by using p type ALGaN
 Text
 Ẑukauskas, M. S. Shur, and R. Gaska, Introduction to Solid
State Lighting (Eiley, New York, 2002)
 Website
 http://en.wikipedia.org
 http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Light-Emitting-Diodes-dot-org/
chap04/chap04.htm
 http://www.lightemittingdiodes.org