Aggravated efficiency droop in vertical-structured gallium nitride light-emitting diodes induced by high temperature aging

The present work demonstrates that aging at higher temperatures significantly aggravates "efficiency droop" in the n-side-up vertical-structured GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The observed luminous efficiency droop is over 40% at the measuring current of 350 mA. This phenomenon closely relates with creeping of Au80Sn20 eutectic bonds. On one hand, the plastic deformation accumulated during creeping at higher aging temperatures will make the LED epilayers tensile strained at room temperature. The tensile strain induces a change of the internal quantum efficiency (IQE). The maximum variation of IQE related with strain states was around 20%. On the other hand, creeping under the thermal-mismatching induced tensile stress activates voids' nucleation and growth in the solder bonds. The distribution profile of voids in solder bonds will be mapped on the multiple quantum-well structure in vertical-structured LED chips. Local current densities can be much higher than the average current density used in the calculation of LED's efficiencies. Therefore, the efficiency roll-off value will shift toward the smaller bias direction and the total internal quantum efficiency will decrease as current increases. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4790594]