With experimental realization of micro-structures, the feasibility of achieving high brightness, low efficiency droop blue LED was implemented based on InGaN/GaN micro-LED-pillar design. A significantly high current density of 492 A/cm2 in a 20 μm diameter (D) micro-LED-pillar was achieved, compared to that of a 200 μm diameter LED (20 A/cm2), both at 10 V bias voltage. In addition, an increase in sustained quantum efficiency from 70.2% to 83.7% at high injection current density (200 A/cm2) was observed in micro-LED-pillars in conjunction with size reduction from 80 μm to 20 μm. A correlation between the strain relief and the electrical performance improvement was established for micro-LED-pillars with D < 50 μm, apart from current spreading effect. The degree of strain relief and its distribution were further studied in micro-LED-pillars with D ranging from 1 μm to 15 μm. Significant wavenumbers down-shifts for E2 and A1 Raman peaks, together with the blue shifted PL peak emission, were observed in as-prepared pillars, reflecting the degree of strain relief. A sharp transition from strained to relaxed epitaxy region was discernible from the competing E2 phonon peaks at 572 cm-1 and 568 cm-1, which were attributed to strain residue and strain relief, respectively. A uniform strain relief at the center of micro-pillars was achieved, i.e. merging of the competing phonon peaks, after Rapid Thermal Annealing (RTA) at 950℃ for 20 seconds, phenomenon of which was observed for the first time. The transition from maximum strain relief to a uniform strain relief was found along the narrow circumference (< 2.5 μm) of the pillars from the line-map of Raman spectroscopy. The extent of strain relief is also examined considering the height (L) of micro-LED-pillars fabricated using FIB micro-machining technique. The significant strain relief of up to 70% (from -1.4 GPa to -0.37 GPa), with a 71 meV PL peak blue shift, suggested that micro-LED-pillar with D < 3 μm and L > 3 μm in the array configuration would allow the building of practical devices. Overall, this work demonstrated a novel top-down approach to manufacture large effective-area, high brightness emitters for solid-state lighting applications.

abstract: This research focuses on the stress and structure evolution observed in-situ during the earliest stages of thin film growth in Cu on Au(111)-reconstruction. For the research, an ultra high vacuum-scanning tunneling microscopy (UHV-STM) system was modified to have the additional capabilities of in-situ deposition and in-situ stress evolution monitoring. The design and fabrication processes for the modifications are explained in detail. The deposition source enabled imaging during the deposition of Cu thin films, while also being columnar enough to avoid negatively impacting the function of the microscope. It was found that the stress-induced changes in piezo voltage occurred over a substantially longer time scale and larger piezo scale than used during imaging, allowing for the deconvolution of the two sources of piezo voltage change. The intrinsic stress evolution observed at the onset of Cu growth was tensile in character and reached a maximum of 0.19 N/m at approximately 0.8ML, with an average tensile slope of 1.0GPa. As the film thickness increased beyond 0.8 ML, the stress became less tensile as the observation of disordered stripe and trigon patterns of misfit dislocations began to appear. The transport of atoms from the surface of enlarged Cu islands into the strained layer played an important role in this stage, because they effectively reduce the activation barrier for the formation of the observed surface structures. A rich array of structures were observed in the work presented here including stripe, disordered stripe and trigon patterns co-existing in a single Cu layer. Heteroepitaxial systems in existing literature showed a uniform structure in the single layer. The non-uniform structures in the single layer of this work may be attributed to the room temperature Cu growth, which can kinetically limit uniform pattern formation. The development of the UHV-STM system with additional capabilities for this work is expected to contribute to research for the stress and structure relationships of many other heteroepitaxial systems. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Materials Science and Engineering 2012