Polarization ratio enhancement of a-plane GaN light emitting diodes by asymmetric two-dimensional photonic crystals

Abstract

Fabricating photonic crystals (PhCs) on GaN based non-polar light emitting diodes (LEDs) is an effective way to increase light extraction and meanwhile to preserve or improve polarization ratio. In this work, a-plane GaN LEDs with two-dimensional PhCs were demonstrated. With the E // m polarized modes (which mean the optical polarization with the electric field parallel to m-axis) as the target of diffraction, we matched E//m modes to the photonic bands and aligned E//c modes to fall within the photonic band gap. The results show stronger E//m but weaker E//c mode diffractions on both c- and m-axes. At the vertical direction, the polarization ratio is enhanced from 45.8% for the planar device to 52.3% for the LEDs with PhCs. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.