Vertical InGaN light-emitting diode with a retained patterned sapphire layer

We present an efficient vertical InGaN light-emitting diode (LED) in which the proposed vertical LEDs were fabricated with patterned sapphire substrates (PSS) using thinning techniques. After the thinning of sapphire substrate, selective dry etching process was performed on the remainder sapphire layer to expose the n-GaN contact layer instead of removing the sapphire substrate using the laser lift-off technique. These processes feature the LEDs with a sapphire-face-up structure and vertical conduction property. The PSS was adopted as a growth substrate to mitigate the light-guided effect, and thereby increase the light-extraction efficiency. Compared with conventional lateral GaN LEDs grown on PSS, the proposed vertical LEDs exhibit a higher light output power and less power degradation at a high driving current. This could be attributed to the fact that the vertical LEDs behave in a manner similar to flip-chip GaN/sapphire LEDs with excellent heat conduction.