The ZnO thin films were grown on GaN template substrates by RF magnetron sputtering at different RF powers and n-ZnO/p-GaN heterojunction LEDs were fabricated to investigate the effect of the RF power on the characteristics of the n-ZnO/p-GaN LEDs. For the growth of the ZnO thin films, the substrate temperature was kept constant at 200˚C and the RF power was varied within the range of 200 to 500W at different growth times to deposit films of 100 nm thick. The electrical, optical and structural properties of ZnO thin films were investigated by ellipsometry, X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), photoluminescence (PL) and by assessing the Hall effect. The characteristics of the n-ZnO/p-GaN LEDs were evaluated by current-voltage (I-V) and electroluminescence (EL) measurements. ZnO thin films were grown with a preferred c-axis orientation along the (0002) plane. The XRD peaks shifted to low angles and the surface roughness became non-uniform with an increase in the RF power. Also, the PL emission peak was red-shifted. The carrier density and the mobility decreased with the RF power. For the n-ZnO/p-GaN LED, the forward current at 20 V decreased and the threshold voltage increased with the RF power. The EL emission peak was observed at approximately 435 nm and the luminescence intensity decreased. Consequently, the crystallinity of the ZnO thin films grown with RF sputtering powers were improved. However, excess Zn affected the structural, electrical and optical properties of the ZnO thin films when the optimal RF power was exceeded. This excess RF power will degrade the characteristics of light emitting devices.

In this study, we have investigated highly efficient nanoscale surface corrugated light emitting diodes (LEDs) for the enhancement of light extraction efficiency (LEE) of nitride semiconductor LEDs. Nanoscale indium tin oxide (ITO) surface corrugations are fabricated by using the conformal nanoimprint technique; it was possible to observe an enhancement of LEE for the ITO surface corrugated LEDs. By incorporating this novel method, we determined that the total output power of the surface corrugated LEDs were enhanced by 45.6% for patterned sapphire substrate LEDs and by 41.9% for flat c-plane substrate LEDs. The enhancement of LEE through nanoscale surface corrugations was studied using 3-dimensional Finite Different Time Domain (FDTD) calculation. From the FDTD calculations, we were able to separate the light extraction from the top and bottom sides of device. This process revealed that light extraction from the top and bottom sides of a device strongly depends on the substrate and the surface corrugation. We found that enhanced LEE could be understood through the mechanism of enhanced light transmission due to refractive index matching and the increase of light scattering from the corrugated surface. LEE calculations for the encapsulated LEDs devices also revealed that low LEE enhancement is expected after encapsulation due to the reduction of the refractive index contrast.

Ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes (LEDs) were grown on a patterned n-type GaN substrate (PNS) with 200 nm silicon-di-oxide (SiO2) nano pattern diameter to improve the light output efficiency of the diodes. Wet etched self assembled indium tin oxide (ITO) nano clusters serve as a dry etching mask for converting the SiO2 layer grown on the n-GaN template into SiO2 nano patterns by inductively coupled plasma etching. PNS is obtained by n-GaN regrowth on the SiO2 nano patterns and UV-LEDs were fabricated using PNS as a template. Two UV-LEDs, a reference LED without PNS and a 200 nm PNS UV-LEDs were fabricated. Scanning Electron microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Photoluminescence (PL) and Light output intensity- Input current- Voltage (L-I-V) characteristics were used to evaluate the ITO-SiO2 nanopattern surface morphology, threading dislocation propagation, PNS crystalline property, PNS optical property and UVLED device performance respectively. The light out put intensity was enhanced by 1.6times@100mA for the LED grown on PNS compared to the reference LED with out PNS.

This study develops a highly transparent ohmic contact using phosphorus doped ZnO with current spreading for p-GaN to increase the optical output power of nitride-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The phosphorus doped ZnO transparentohmic contact layer was prepared by radio frequency magnetron sputtering with post-deposition annealing. The transmittance ofthe phosphorus doped ZnO exceeds 90% in the region of 440nm to 500nm. The specific contact resistance of the phosphorusdoped ZnO on p-GaN was determined to be 7.82×10-3Ω·cm2 after annealing at 700oC. GaN LED chips with dimensions of300×300µm fabricated with the phosphorus doped ZnO transparent ohmic contact were developed and produced a 2.7Vincrease in forward voltage under a nominal forward current of 20mA compared to GaN LED with Ni/Au Ohmic contact.However, the output power increased by 25% at the injection current of 20mA compared to GaN LED with the Ni/Au contactscheme.