Azimuthally isotropic irradiance of GaN-based light-emitting diodes with GaN microlens arrays

In this paper, the irradiance-modifying concept is proposed by introducing a microlens array on the p-GaN layer of GaN-based light-emitting diode (LED). Every microlens can locally modulate photons emitting from a micro-scaled active region of multiple quantum wells (MQWs) just beneath the microlens. The azimuthally isotropic irradiance from the GaN-based LED with microlens arrays is demonstrated numerically and experimentally. To realize such a novel LED, one-dimensional GaN microlens array with a period of 1.6 mu m and a filling factor of 0.64 are fabricated by using dry etching. According to experimental results, the azimuthally isotropic light emission of proposed LED is observed. By using the angular-resolved photoluminescence, its intensity variation corresponding to the azimuth angles is as low as 10% within the angle region of +/- 50 degrees. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America