This study aimed to elucidate factors limiting power conversion efficiency (PCE) in GaN-based micro-light-emitting diodes (μ-LEDs). To this end, we investigated the effects of operating temperature and chip-size of μ-LEDs on their efficiency. For the investigation, 460 nm-emitting μ-LEDs with various chip-sizes were fabricated; then their characteristics were carefully measured from 100 to 400 K. As the chip-size decreases and the operating temperature increases, their PCE and external quantum efficiency (EQE) decrease, while voltage efficiency (VE) increases. This indicates that the EQE plays a more important role than the VE in determining the PCE of μ-LEDs. Particularly, for a chip-size of 20 × 20 μm², the EQE was very lower and the ideality factor was unexpectedly higher compared to the others for all operating temperatures, which is believed to be due to the critical plasma damage at the sidewall during dry-etching process for the chip-size < 20 × 20 μm².

In this study, we measured and comparatively analyzed the characteristics of MPS (Merged Pin Schottky) diodes in 4H-SiC by changing the areal ratio between the Schottky and PN junction region. Increasing the temperature from 298 K to 473 K resulted in the threshold voltage shifting from 0.8 V to 0.5 V. A wider Schottky region indicates a lower on-resistance and a faster turn-on. The effective barrier height was smaller for a wider Schottky region. Additionally, the depletion layer became smaller under the influence of the reduced effective barrier height. The wider Schottky region resulted in the ideality factor being reduced from 1.37 to 1.01, which is closer to an ideal device. The leakage saturation current increased with the widening Schottky region, resulting in a 1.38 times to 2.09 times larger leakage current.

Silicon carbide is widely used in power semiconductor devices owing to its high energy gap. In particular, Schottky barrier diode (SBD) and PiN diodes fabricated on 4H-SiC wafers are being applied to various fields such as power devices. The characteristics of SBD and PiN diodes can be extracted from C-V and I-V characteristics. The measured Schottky barrier height (SBH) was 1.23 eV in the temperature range of 298~473 K, and the average ideal factor is 1.17. The results show that the device with the Schottky contact is characterized by the theory of thermal emission. As the temperature increases, the parameters are changed and the Vth is shifted to lower voltages.

Abstract: We have fabricated schottky barrier diode (SBDs) using polar (c-plane) and non polar (a-, m-plane) n-type 6H-SiC wafers. Ni/SiC ohmic contact was accomplished on the backside of the SiC wafers by thermal evaporation and annealed for 20minutes at 950℃ in mixture gas (N(2) 90% + H(2) balanced). The specific contact resistance was 3.6×10-4 Ω㎝2 after annealing at 950℃. The XRD results of the alloyed contact layer show that formation of NiSi2 layer might be responsible for the ohmic contact. The active rectifying electrode was formed by the same thermal evaporation of Ni thin film on topside of the SiC wafers and annealed for 5 minutes at 500℃ in mixture gas (N(2) 90% + H(2) balanced). The electrical properties of SBDs have been characterized by means of I-V and C-V curves. The forward voltage drop is about 0.95 V, 0.8 V and 0.8 V for c-, a- and m-plane SiC SBDs respectively. The ideality factor (η) of all SBDs have been calculated from log(I)-V plot. The values of ideality factor were 1.46, 1.46 and 1.61 for c-, a- and m-plane SiC SBDs, respectively. The schottky barrier height (SBH) of all SBDs have been calculated from C-V curve. The values of SBH were 1.37 eV, 1.09 eV and 1.02 eV for c-, a- and m-plane SiC SBDs, respectively.