Origin of InGaN/GaN light-emitting diode efficiency improvements using tunnel-junction-cascaded active regions

摘要

This Letter investigates the efficiency enhancement achieved by tunnel junction insertion into the InGaN/GaN multi-quantum well (MQW) active region of blue light emitting diodes (LEDs). The peak quantum efficiency of such LED exceeds 100%, but the maximum wall-plug efficiency (WPE) hardly changes. However, due to the increased bias, the WPE peaks at much higher input power, i.e., the WPE droop is significantly delayed, and the output power is strongly enhanced. The main physical reason for this improvement lies in the non-uniform vertical carrier distribution typically observed within InGaN MQWs.