Emission dynamics of GaN-based blue resonant-cavity light-emitting diodes

Highlights: • By using a resonant cavity design, the carrier localization in QWs is enhanced. • A localization model is proposed to describe the carrier transport. • The different gain enhancement factors cause the mode enhancement or suppression. • The emission spectrum is tuned due to the band-filling effect and heating effect. -- Abstract: We fabricated GaN-based blue resonant-cavity light-emitting diodes (RCLEDs) by inserting InGaN quantum well (QW) active region between two dielectric distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). Due to the different gain enhancement factors in a single device, multi-longitudinal modes were observed and tuned with changing the injection current density: pure-blue (PB) at low current density, violet-blue (VB) at intermediate current density, and PB again at high current density. The variation of emission spectra is explained by the competition between band-filling effect and self-heating effect.