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Monoclinic gallium oxide thin films were grown on (0001) sapphire at various substrate temperatures ranging from 400 to 1000 °C by pulsed laser deposition using a KrF excimer laser. The structural, optical and compositional properties of the films were analyzed by using x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, optical transmittance, and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy. As the substrate temperature was increased to 800 °C, the gallium oxide film possesses single crystalline phase with a preferred growth orientation of (−201) plane and higher crystal quality than those at the other temperatures. Optical transmittance measurements reveal the films grown at 600-1000 °C exhibit a clear absorption edge at the deep ultraviolet region around 250 nm wavelength. Based on the results of Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, the O/Ga ratio of gallium oxide film increased gradually with increasing substrate temperature. When the substrate temperature was raised to 800-1000 °C, the film composition was close to the formation of Ga 2 O 3 , indicating the O vacancies and defects were reduced. Furthermore, the films grown at 600 and 800 °C were chosen to fabricate solar-blind metal-semiconductor-metal photodetectors. At an applied bias of 5 V, the photodetector prepared with 800 °C-grown film has a lower dark current of 1.2 × 10 −11 A and a higher responsivity of 0.903 A/W (at a wavelength of 250 nm) than those with 600 °C-grown films. The better device performance is ascribed to the higher crystal quality and fewer O vacancies in the 800 °C-grown film. Moreover, the results indicate the gallium oxide films presented in this study have high potential for deep ultraviolet photodetector applications.

An approach to improve the defect density and internal quantum efficiency of near-ultraviolet emitters was proposed using a combination of epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELOG) and patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) techniques. Especially, a complementary dot array pattern corresponding to the underlying PSS was used for the ELOG-SiO2 mask design. Based on the transmission-electron-microscopy and etch-pit-density results, the ELOG/SiO2/GaN/PSS structure can reduce the defect density to a level of 10(5) cm(-2). The internal quantum efficiency of the InGaN-based ELOG-PSS light-emitting diode (LED) sample showed three times in magnitude as compared with that of the conventional GaN/sapphire one. Under a 20 mA injection current, the output powers of ELOG-PSS, PSS, and conventional LED samples were measured to be 3.3, 2.9, and 2.5 mW, respectively. The enhanced output power could be due to a combination of the reduction in dislocation density (by ELOG) and improved light extraction efficiency (by PSS). Unlike the previous double ELOG approaches, the presented ELOG-PSS structure needs only one regrowth process and will have high potential in future high-quality ultraviolet emitters, even blue/green laser diode applications. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics

There is a significant gap between the internal and external efficiencies of conventional GaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The reason for this shortfall is the narrow escape cone for light in high refractive index semiconductors. In this letter, the p-side- up GaN/sapphire LEDs with surface textured indium tin oxide (ITO) widow layers were investigated using natural lithography with polystyrene spheres as the etching mask. Under optimum etching conditions, the surface roughness of the ITO film can reach 140 nm while the polystyrene sphere on the textured ITO surface is maintained at about 250 - 300 nm in diameter. The output power of the ITO/GaN LED with and without surface texturing is 10.9, and 8.5 mW at 20 mA, respectively. The LEDs fabricated using the surface-textured ITO produced an output power that exceeded that of the planar-surface LED by about 28% at 20 mA. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics

In this research, five sizes (100 × 100, 75 × 75, 50 × 50, 25 × 25, 10 × 10 µm2) of InGaN red micro-light emitting diode (LED) dies are produced using laser-based direct writing and maskless technology. It is observed that with increasing injection current, the smaller the size of the micro-LED, the more obvious the blue shift of the emission wavelength. When the injection current is increased from 0.1 to 1 mA, the emission wavelength of the 10 × 10 μm2 micro-LED is shifted from 617.15 to 576.87 nm. The obvious blue shift is attributed to the stress release and high current density injection. Moreover, the output power density is very similar for smaller chip micro-LEDs at the same injection current density. This behavior is different from AlGaInP micro-LEDs. The sidewall defect is more easily repaired by passivation, which is similar to the behavior of blue micro-LEDs. The results indicate that the red InGaN epilayer structure provides an opportunity to realize the full color LEDs fabricated by GaN-based LEDs.