Microcavity Light Emitting Diodes Based on GaN membranes Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy on Silicon

Resonant-cavity InGaN/GaN quantum well light emitting diodes have been fabricated. Nitride layers were grown by MBE on Si (111). Authors fabricated the structures using a combination of Si substrate etching, GaN etching and dielectric (Ta2O5/SiO2) mirror deposition. The electroluminescence spectra show that the emission within the distributed Bragg reflector stop band is enhanced in the membrane microcavity. The cavity modes are broadened by some cavity length non-uniformity that is introduced when the GaN is back etched to adjust the cavity length. This process does not need any transfer on an intermediate host substrate and is fully compatible with large area semiconductor processing. 17 refs.