BAlN for III-nitride UV light emitting diodes: undoped electron blocking layer

TL;DR

This paper proposes using an undoped BAlN electron-blocking layer in UV LEDs to improve performance by reducing doping issues, effectively blocking electrons, and enhancing hole injection, offering a promising alternative to traditional doped layers.

Contribution

The study introduces an undoped BAlN EBL as a novel solution to overcome p-doping challenges in UV LED design, demonstrating its advantages over conventional doped AlGaN EBLs.

Findings

Undoped BAlN EBL effectively blocks electrons.

Improves hole injection compared to doped AlGaN EBL.

Reduces dependence on p-doping levels for LED performance.

Abstract

The undoped BAlN electron-blocking layer (EBL) is investigated to replace the conventional AlGaN EBL in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Numerical studies of the impact of variously doped EBLs on the output characteristics of LEDs demonstrate that the LED performance shows heavy dependence on the p-doping level in the case of the AlGaN EBL, while it shows less dependence on the p-doping level for the BAlN EBL. As a result, we propose an undoped BAlN EBL for LEDs to avoid the p-doping issues, which a major technical challenge in the AlGaN EBL. Without doping, the proposed BAlN EBL structure still possesses a superior capacity in blocking electrons and improving hole injection compared with the AlGaN EBL having high doping. This study provides a feasible route to addressing electron leakage and insufficient hole injection issues when designing UV LED structures.