High optical bandwidth GaN based photonic-crystal light-emitting diodes

摘要

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) for visible light communication (VLC) as radio sources is a solution to channel crowding of radio frequency (RF) signal. However, for the application on high-speed communication, getting higher bandwidth of LEDs is always the problem which is limited by the spontaneous carrier lifetime in the multiple quantum wells. In this paper, we proposed GaN-based LEDs accompanied with photonic crystal (PhC) nanostructure for high speed communication. Using the characteristic of photonic band selection in photonic crystal structure, the guided modes are modulated by RF signal. The PhC can also provide faster mode extraction. From time resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) at room temperature, carrier lifetime of both lower- and higher-order modes is shortened. By observing f_(-3dB) -3 curve, it reveals that the bandwidth of PhC LEDs is higher than that of typical LED. The optical - 3-dB bandwidth (f_(-3dB)) can be achieved up to 240 MHz in the PhC LED (PhCLED). We conclude that the higher operation speed can be obtained due to faster radiative carrier recombination of extracted guided modes from the PhC nanostructure.