The presence of alloy disorder in III-nitride materials has been demonstrated to play a significant role in device performance through effects such as carrier localization and carrier transport. Relative to blue light emitting diodes (LEDs), these effects become more severe at green wavelengths. Because of the potential fluctuations that arise due to alloy disorder, full three-dimensional (3D) simulations are necessary to accurately relate materials properties to device performance. We demonstrate experimentally and through simulation that increased quantum well (QW) number in $c$-plane green LEDs contributes to excess driving voltage, and therefore reduced electrical efficiency. Experimentally, we grew an LED series with the number of QWs varying from one to seven and observed a systematic increase in voltage with the addition of each QW. Trends in LED electrical properties obtained from 3D simulations, which account for the effects of random alloy fluctuations, are in agreement with experimental data. Agreement is achieved without the need for adjusting polarization parameters from their known values. From these results, we propose that the polarization induced barriers at the GaN/InGaN (lower barrier/QW) interfaces and the sequential filling of QWs both contribute significantly to the excess forward voltage in multiple QW $c$-plane green LEDs.

• Received 5 December 2019
• Revised 14 February 2020
• Accepted 9 April 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.4.054604