Optical properties of blue light-emitting diodes in the InGaN/GaN system at high current densities

The current-voltage and brightness-voltage characteristics and the electroluminescence spectra of blue InGaN/GaN-based light-emitting diodes are studied to clarify the cause of the decrease in the emission efficiency at high current densities and high temperatures. It is found that the linear increase in the emission intensity with increasing injection current changes into a sublinear increase, resulting in a decrease in efficiency as the observed photon energy shifts from the mobility edge. The emission intensity decreases with increasing temperature when the photon energy approaches the mobility edge; this results in the reduction in efficiency on overheating. With increasing temperature, the peak of the electroluminescence spectrum shifts to lower photon energies because of the narrowing of the band gap. The results are interpreted taking into account the fact that the density-of-states tails in InGaN are filled not only via trapping of free charge carriers, but also via tunneling transitions into the tail states. The decrease in the emission efficiency at high currents is attributed to the suppression of tunneling injection and the enhancement of losses via the nonradiative recombination channel “under” the quantum well.