Phosphor-converted light-emitting diodes (LEDs) were fabricated by precoating blue/green/red phosphors onto near ultraviolate (n-UV) LED chips prior to package into LED lamps. With a 20-mA injection current, it was found that the color temperature T/sub c/ was around 5900 K and the color-rendering index R/sub a/ was around 75 for the "n-UV+blue/green/red" white LED lamps. It was also found that no changes in color temperature T/sub c/ and color-rendering index R/sub a/ could be observed when we increased the injection from 20 to 60 mA. These results indicate that such "n-UV+blue/green/red" white LEDs are much more optically stable than the conventional "blue+yellow" LEDs.

In this study, a very thin Ni/Au bilayer metal film was prepared by electron beam evaporation and thermal alloying to form ohmic contact on p-type GaN film. After thermal alloying, the current–voltage (I–V) characteristic of Ni/Au contact on p-type GaN film exhibited ohmic behavior. The Ni/Au contacts showed a specific contact resistance of 1.7×10−2 Ω cm2 at an alloying temperature of 450 °C. In addition, the light transmittance of the Ni/Au (2 nm/6 nm) bilayer on p-type GaN was measured to be around 85% at 470 nm. These results suggest that a suitable metallization technology for the fabrication of light emitting devices can be achieved.

In this work indium tin oxide (ITO) films were prepared using electron beam evaporation to form Schottky contacts on n-type GaN films. The thermal stability of ITO on n-type GaN was also investigated by annealing the samples at various temperatures. In addition, current–voltage (I–V) measurements were taken to deduce the Schottky barrier heights. Owing to the large series resistance, the Norde method was used to plot the F(V)–V curves and the effective Schottky barrier heights were determined as well. The effective Schottky barrier heights were 0.68, 0.88, 0.94, and 0.95 eV for nonannealed, 400, 500, and 600 °C annealed samples, respectively. Results presented herein indicate that an increase of the barrier heights may be attributed to the formation of an interfacial layer at the ITO/GaN interface after annealing.

InGaN/GaN multiple-quantum-well light-emitting diode (LED) structures including a Si-doped In/sub 0.23/Ga/sub 0.77/N/GaN short-period superlattice (SPS) tunneling contact were grown by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. In/sub 0.23/Ga/sub 0.77/N/GaN(n/sup +/)-GaN(p) tunneling junction, the low-resistivity n/sup +/-In/sub 0.3/Ga/sub 0.77/N/GaN SPS instead of high-resistivity p-type GaN as a top contact layer, allows the reverse-biased tunnel junction to form an "ohmic" contact. In this structure, the sheet electron concentration of Si-doped In/sub 0.23/Ga/sub 0.77/N/GaN SPS is around 1/spl times/10/sup 14//cm/sup 2/, leading to an averaged electron concentration of around 1/spl times/10/sup 20//cm/sup 3/. This high-conductivity SPS would lead to a low-resistivity ohmic contact (Au/Ni/SPS) of LED. Experimental results indicate that the LEDs can achieve a lower operation voltage of around 2.95 V, i.e., smaller than conventional devices which have an operation voltage of about 3.8 V.

Indium-tin-oxide (ITO), Au, Ni, and Pt layers were deposited onto n-GaN films and/or glass substrates by electron-beam evaporation. With proper annealing, it was found that we could improve the optical properties of the ITO layers and achieve a maximum transmittance of 98% at 360 nm. GaN-based MSM UV sensors with ITO, Au, Ni, and Pt as contact electrodes were also fabricated. It was found that we could achieve a maximum 0.12 A photocurrent and a photocurrent to dark current contrast higher than five orders of magnitude for the 600/spl deg/C-annealed ITO/n-GaN MSM UV sensor at a 5-V bias voltage. We also found that the maximum responsivity at 345 nm was 7.2 A/W and 0.9 A/W when the 600/spl deg/C-annealed ITO/n-GaN MSM UV sensor was biased at 5 V and 0.5 V, respectively. These values were much larger than those observed from other metal/n-GaN MSM UV sensors. However, the existence of photoconductive gain in the 600/spl deg/C-annealed ITO/n-GaN MSM UV sensor also results in a slower operation speed and a smaller 3-dB bandwidth as compared with the metal/n-GaN MSM UV sensors.