Accelerated Degradation of High Power Light-Emitting Diode Resulted from Inhomogeneous Current Distribution

The uniformity of current spreading is one of the key points to inspect the reliability and endurance of InGaN-based light-emitting diodes. In this paper, we propose an effective circuit model to analyze the phenomenon of premature turn-on diodes in the active layer. With the aging tests and novel investigation of failure analyses, the simulating results are good agreement with experimental data. It is found that an inhomogeneous distribution of forward current in light-emitting diode chips, as measured by conductive atomic force microscopes, provides the evidence that V-shaped defects and the associated threading dislocations are electrically active. Furthermore, the results of emission microscopy images and transmission electron microscope reviews support the assumption that the threading dislocations associated with V-shaped defects behave as very small shunt resistors connected across p-n junction. This study provides a degradation mechanism to realized one of the failure modes of high power light-emitting diodes. (C) 2011 The Japan Society of Applied Physics