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High Brightness Lasing at Sub-micron Enabled by Droop-Free Fin Light-Emitting Diodes

Applied Physics 2020-07-21 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

Efficiency droop, i.e., a decline in brightness of LEDs at high electrical currents, has limited the performance of all commercially available LEDs. Until now, it has limited the output power of sub-micron LEDs and lasers to nanowatt range. Here we present a fin p-n junction LED pixel that eliminates efficiency droop, allowing LEDs brightness to increase linearly with injected current. With record current densities of 1000 KA/cm2 (100 mA), the LEDs transition to lasing within the fin, with high brightness. Despite a light extraction efficiency of only 15%, these devices exceed the output power of any previous electrically-driven sub-micron LED or laser pixel by 100 to 1000 times, while showing comparable external quantum efficiencies. Modeling suggests that spreading of the electron-hole recombination region in fin LEDs at high injection levels suppresses the non-radiative Auger recombination processes. Further refinement of this design is expected to enable development of a new generation of high brightness electrically addressable LED and laser pixels for macro- and micro-scale applications.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.10101,
  title  = {High Brightness Lasing at Sub-micron Enabled by Droop-Free Fin Light-Emitting Diodes},
  author = {Babak Nikoobakht and Robin P. Hansen and Yuqin Zong and Amit Agrawal and Michael Shur and Jerry Tersoff},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.10101},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

32 pages, 5 figures