Effects of high-dose 80 MeV proton irradiation on the electroluminescent and electrical performance of InGaN light-emitting diodes

Abstract

Abstract The paper reports on the degradation of InGaN/GaN Blue LED submitted to proton irradiation at 80 MeV and various fluences (4×1013 p cm−2 and 1×1014 p cm−2). After irradiation, we found a decrease in light output power and the external quantum efficiency with fluence. Photoluminescence (PL) measurements exhibited that the peak position at 400, 447 and 568 nm remained unchanged, only the peak intensity decreased. The intensity of the blue emission reduced by 75%, indicating that the active region degraded seriously; the intensity from In x Ga1-x N (x = 0.11) reduced more than two times in comparison with the blue emission, implying that proton irradiation affected In x Ga1-x N more seriously than InGaN/GaN MQWs. The degradation of LED is ascribed to the increase in the defect-related Shockley–Read–Hall recombination after 80 MeV proton irradiation with higher fluence.