Air-ring microstructure arrays for enhanced light extraction from a face-up light-emitting diode

Abstract

In this Letter, a light-emitting diode (LED) with prism-shaped-air-ring microstructures (PSAMs) formed on flat sapphire substrate is demonstrated as an alternative design to face-up LEDs on patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) for enhanced light extraction efficiency. In this LED design, the emitted photons can be deflected to the top of the chip for its effective extraction, contrary to the PSS-LED wherein photons are guided to sapphire and get absorbed by packaging materials. The PSAM-LED showed an enhancement in the radiometric power as high as 10%with a low far-field angle of 129° over that of a PSS-LED under an injection current of 20 mA.