Wafer-Bonded AlGaInP/Au/AuBe/SiO2/Si Light-Emitting Diodes

[[abstract]]An AlGaInP light-emitting diode (LED) with a Au/AuBe/SiO2/Si mirror substrate has been successfully fabricated by the wafer bonding technique. The mirror-substrate LED is capable of emitting luminous intensity of 90 mcd under 20 mA injection. It is clearly far superior to the conventional absorbed-substrate LED with a distributed Bragg reflector structure (≤1 mcd). This device exhibits normal p-n diode behavior with a forward voltage of less than 2 V operating at 20 mA. The leakage current is about 3 nA under a 36 V reverse bias. This result indicates that the wafer bonding technique does not adversely affect the I–V characteristic of the LED device. Moreover, the emission wavelength of the bonded LED was independent of the injection current. The low forward series resistance and the Si substrate providing a good heat sink solve the joule heating problem inherent in conventional LEDs