Thin film technology for optoelectronics and their thermal management

Abstract

Thin-film semiconductor optoelectronics are important for applications from optical communication, solid-state lighting, and wearable electronics to biomedical sensors. It is now possible to separate the micrometer-thick device layers from their native substrates and transfer them onto new platforms to optimize system performance and integration. The understanding of thermal management for such devices is very important in order to control the junction temperature effectively. Here, the laser-lift-off (LLO) technique was theoretically and experimentally studied. The temperature distribution at the III-nitride/sapphire interface induced by absorption of 248-nm KrF excimer energetic laser pulses was simulated to verify the experimental results. A 1.5-m-thick n-type Al0.6Ga0.4N membrane was separated from a c-plane sapphire substrate and then bonded to a Si substrate. The electrical behaviour of Ti/Al/Ti/Au contacts on the N-polar n-Al0.6Ga0.4N membrane was characterized. Furthermore, free-standing semipolar InGaN/GaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs) emitting at 445 nm were first realized by separation from patterned r-plane sapphire substrate using LLO. The LEDs showed a turn-on voltage of 3.6 V and output power of 0.87 mW at 20 mA. Electroluminescence measurements showed stronger emission intensity along the inclined c-direction. The -3 dB bandwidth of the LEDs is in excess of 150 MHz at 20 mA and a back-to-back data transmission rate at 300 Mbps is demonstrated. This indicates that the LEDs can be used for high bandwidth visible light communications. For thermal management of thin-film optoelectronics, a GaAs based laser diode (LD) was investigated. The 2-dimensional temperature distribution of the transfer-bonded LD was simulated; where the power dissipation, the thermal resistance of different cavity lengths and configurations were investigated. This can be utilized to optimize the device design and the choice of carrier substrate for efficient thermal management of thin-film optoelectronics