This study investigated a graded-refractive-index (GRIN) coating pattern capable of improving the light extraction efficiency of GaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The planar LEDs had total internal reflection thanks to the large difference in refractive index between the LED semiconductor and the surrounding medium (air). The main goal of this paper was to reduce the trapped light inside the LED by controlling the refractive index using various compositions of (TiO2)x(SiO2)1−x in GRIN LEDs consisting of five dielectric layers. Several types of multilayer LEDs were simulated and it was determined the transmittance value of the LEDs with many layers was greater than the LEDs with less layers. Then, the specific ranges of incident angles of the individual layers which depend on the refractive index were evaluated. According to theoretical calculations, the light extraction efficiency (LEE) of the five-layer GRIN is 25.29 %, 28.54 % and 30.22 %, respectively. Consequently, the five-layer GRIN LEDs patterned enhancement outcome LEE over the reference planar LEDs. The results suggest the increased light extraction efficiency is related to the loss of Fresnel transmission and the release of the light mode trapped inside the LED chip by the graded-refractive-index.

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.