Drive High Power UVC-LED Wafer into Low-Cost 4-Inch Era: Effect of Strain Modulation

Ultraviolet-C light-emitting diodes (UVC-LEDs) have great application in pathogen inactivation under various kinds of situations, especially in the fight against COVID-19. Unfortunately, its epitaxial wafers are so far limited to a size of 2 inches, which greatly increases the cost of massive production. In this work, a 4-inch crack-free high-power UVC-LED wafer is reported. This achievement relies on a proposed strain-tailored strategy, where a 3D to 2D (3D-2D) transition layer is introduced during the homo-epitaxy of AlN on the high temperature annealed (HTA)-AlN template, which successfully drives the original compressive strain into a tensile one and thus solves the challenge of realizing a high-quality Al0.6Ga0.4N layer with a flat surface. This smooth Al0.6Ga0.4N layer is nearly pseudomorphically grown on the strain-tailored HTA-AlN template, leading to 4-inch UVC-LED wafers with outstanding performances. The strategy succeeds in compromising the bottlenecked contradictory in producing a large-sized UVC-LED wafer on pronounced crystalline AlN template: The compressive strain in HTA-AlN allows for a crack-free 4-inch wafer, but at the same time leads to a deterioration of the AlGaN morphology and crystal quality. The launch of 4-inch wafers makes the chip fabrication process of UVC-LEDs match the mature blue one, and will definitely speed up the universal application of UVC-LED in daily life.

Automated summary

A 4-inch crack-free high-power UVC-LED wafer is reported in this study, achieved through a strain-tailored strategy. The introduction of a 3D-2D transition layer during the homo-epitaxy process enables the growth of a high-quality Al0.6Ga0.4N layer, resulting in outstanding performances of the 4-inch UVC-LED wafers. This breakthrough brings cost-effectiveness to UVC-LED production and accelerates its application in daily life.