Comparison of Ni/Au, ITO, and ATO‐based current spreading layers for near‐ultraviolet light‐emitting diodes

Authors:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Current‐voltage (I‐V) characteristics, optical transmittance, and light output power measurements were performed to investigate different contact schemes including Ni (5 nm)/Au (5 nm), Ag (0.5 nm)/ITO (100 nm), and Ag (0.5 nm)/ITO (5 nm)/ATO (150 nm) for near‐ultraviolet (∼400 nm) III‐nitride light‐emitting diodes (LEDs). Ag/ITO contacts show the highest transmittance of 98.73% at 406 nm when annealed at a temperature of 700 °C for 5 minutes in air. The lowest forward voltage of LEDs with Ag/ITO contacts is 3.29 V at 20 mA compared to 3.16 V of Ni/Au contacts annealed at 570 °C for 5 minutes in air. E‐beam evaporated Ag/ITO/ATO contacts, on the other hand, give somewhat higher forward voltage at 3.36 V after annealing, but high transmittance of ATO‐based contacts at short wavelength regions shows its potential applicability to very short wavelength UV LEDs.

This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit: