Electrostatic discharge characteristics of InGaN/GaN light-emitting diodes with Si-doped graded superlattice

We report the influences of a Si-doped graded superlattice (SiGSL) on the electrostatic discharge (ESD) characteristics of an InGaN/GaN light-emitting diode (LED). For comparison, a conventional InGaN/GaN LED (C-LED) was also investigated. The luminous efficacy for the SiGSL-LED was 2.68 times stronger than that for the C-LED at the injection current of 20 mA. The resistances estimated from current-voltage (I-V) characteristic curves were 16.5 and 8.8 Ω for the C-LED and SiGSL-LED, respectively. After the ESD treatment at the voltages of 4000 and 6000 V, there was no significant change in the I-V curves for the SiGSL-LED. Also, there was small variation in the I-V characteristics for the SiGSL-LED at the ESD voltage of 8000 V. However, the I-V curves for the C-LED were drastically degraded with increasing ESD voltage. While the light emission was not observed at the injection current of 20 mA from the C-LED sample after the ESD treatment, the emission spectra for the SiGSL-LED sample were clearly measured with the output powers of 10.47, 9.66, and 7.27 mW for the ESD voltages of 4000, 6000, and 8000 V respectively.