Influence of top mirror on performance of GaN-based resonant cavity light-emitting diode

Abstract

In this paper, two kinds of distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) with high-reflective-film structure and filter structure are designed and evaporated on the top of GaN-based resonant cavity light emitting diode (RCLED), respectively. Firstly, the reflectivity spectra of the two kinds of DBRs are simulated. Then, the differences in performance including optical longitudinal modes, spectral linewidth, and output light intensity between the two kinds of RCLED devices with different top mirrors, are compared and analyzed. Finally, the influence of the top mirror reflection characteristics on the output spectrum of the RCLED is studied in detail. The results show that the top mirror is an important part of RCLED, and its reflection characteristics determine the optical performance of the device. For the conventional DBR with high-reflective-film structure, its reflectivity spectrum has a wide high-reflection band. Accordingly, the spectral linewidth of the RCLED can be effectively narrowed by using the conventional DBR as the top mirror. However, the spectrum still consists of multi-longitudinal modes. For the DBR with filter structure, its reflectivity spectrum has a narrow high-transmittance band at the central wavelength. Depending on the modulation effect of the high-transmittance band to the output light, single longitudinal mode light emission is realized for the RCLED with the specially designed DBR as the top mirror, which shows a broad application prospect in optical communication and optical fiber sensing. Moreover, the spectral characteristics of the RCLED can be further optimized to meet its application requirements in much more fields, by designing the top mirror structure and changing its reflectivity spectrum characteristics.