Abstract
Chemical wet etching on c-plane sapphire wafers by three etching solutions (H3PO4, H2SO4, and H3PO4/H2SO4 mixing solution) was studied. Among these etching agents, the mixing H3PO4/H2SO4 solution has the fastest etching rate (1.5 μm/min). Interestingly, we found that H2SO4 does not etch the c-plane sapphire wafer in thickness; instead, a facet pyramidal pattern is formed on the c-plane sapphire wafer. GaN light-emitting diode (LED) epitaxial structure was grown on the sapphire wafer with the pyramidal pattern and the standard flat sapphire wafer. X-ray diffraction and photoluminescence measurement show that the pyramidal pattern on the sapphire wafer improved crystalline quality but augmented the compressive stress level in the GaN LED epilayer. The horizontal LED chips fabricated on the pyramidal-patterned sapphire wafer have a larger light output than the horizontal LED chips fabricated on the standard flat sapphire wafer by 20%.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Prof. Chung, National Central University, Taiwan, for the fruitful discussion. Also, the work was financially supported by NSC 100-3113-E-008-001, Top-level Research Centers Grants 100G903-2, and National Science Council Grant projects NSC 98-2221-E-008-027-MY3. Also, PL measurement by N.W. Hsu is greatly acknowledged.
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Lin, H., Chen, Y., Chang, C. et al. Characterization study of GaN-based epitaxial layer and light-emitting diode on nature-patterned sapphire substrate. Journal of Materials Research 27, 971–977 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2012.24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2012.24