Degradation behaviors of high power GaN-based blue light emitting diodes

The degradation mechanism of high power InGaN/GaN blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) is investigated in this paper. The LED samples were stressed at room temperature under 350-mA injection current for about 400 h. The light output power of the LEDs decreased by 35% during the first 100 h and then remained almost unchanged, and the reverse current at −5 V increased from 10⁻⁹ A to 10⁻⁷ A during the aging process. The power law, whose meaning was re-illustrated by the improved rate equation, was used to analyze the light output power-injection current (L—I) curves. The analysis results indicate that nonradiative recombination, Auger recombination, and the third-order term of carriers overflow increase during the aging process, all of which may be important reasons for the degradation of LEDs. Besides, simulating L—I curves with the improved rate equation reveal that higher-than-third-order terms of carriers overflow may not be the main degradation mechanism, because they change slightly when the LED is stressed