Nanostructure Ag dots for improving thermal stability of Ag reflector for GaN-based light-emitting diodes

Abstract

We report the improved thermal stability of Ag reflectors for GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) using Ag nano-dots (similar to 65-similar to 190 nm in size). The nano-dot Ag samples show much higher reflectance than the Ag only samples. The annealed nano-dot Ag samples exhibit a smoother surface, where the grains contain numerous micro-twins. < 111 > texture becomes more dominantly evolved in the nano-dot Ag samples than in the Ag only samples after annealing. LEDs with the 300 degrees C-annealed nano-dot Ag reflectors exhibit 15%-36% higher output power (at 20 mA) than LEDs with the 300 and 400 degrees C-annealed Ag only reflectors. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4737015]