The present invention relates to light emitting diodes (“LEDs”) and in particular relates to high-brightness light emitting diodes formed from Group III nitride active structures on silicon carbide substrates.
In general, light emitting diodes represent one class of photonic devices that are commercially well-established for numerous applications. For the first few decades of the semiconductor era, however, such light emitting diode applications (although numerous and successful) were limited to relatively low-intensity applications such as indicator lights or small displays (e.g., handheld calculators). One reason for such limited application was based in the available semiconductor materials, most typically silicon (Si) and gallium arsenide (GaAs). Basically, and as well-understood in this art, a light emitting diode emits light based upon the recombination of electrons and holes under the influence of an applied bias across a p-n junction. Because the frequency (and thus the wavelength) of emitted light is directly related to the energy of the transition leading to the recombination (E=hv), the frequency of light emitted by a light emitting diode is based upon (and ultimately limited by) the material's bandgap.
In that regard, GaAs has a bandgap of 1.4 electron volts (eV). Accordingly, the highest-energy transitions that GaAs can produce are in the red, orange and yellow portions of the visible spectrum.
A number of commonly assigned patents and co-pending patent applications likewise discuss the theory and nature of light emitting diodes, including but not limited to U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,459,100; 6,373,077; 6,201,262; 6,187,606; 5,912,477; 5,416,342; and 5,838,706; and Published U.S. Applications Nos. 20020022290; 20020093020; and 20020123164. The contents of these are incorporated entirely herein by reference.
In order to further commercialize light emitting diode applications, however, colors other than red, orange and yellow must be available. Specifically blue and green light emitting diodes are required (along with red diodes) to create white light or full color displays. Because these colors represent higher-energy portions of the visible spectrum, they require larger transitions than the bandgaps of silicon or gallium arsenide can provide. Thus, in the last two decades, significant interest has been developed—and progress generated—in a wider bandgap materials such as silicon carbide (2.99 eV for the 6H polytype) and the Group III nitride's (e.g., 3.36 eV for gallium nitride). The Group III nitrides are particularly preferred because they are “direct” (and thus higher-efficiency) emitters.
In addition to providing blue, green, or white light (as well as emissions in the ultraviolet range), the Group III nitride light emitting diodes have the potential to provide replacement for long-standing illumination technologies such as incandescent and fluorescent lighting. In comparison to such mature technologies, light emitting diodes (“solid-state lighting”) are longer-lasting, physically more rugged, use less power, and are more efficient. Historically, however, LEDs have lacked brightness comparable to incandescent, fluorescent or vapor-discharge lights and thus these older technologies have continued to occupy the field. Only recently, have white LEDs (or LED-based white-emitting devices) begun to make inroads into commercial lighting applications, with most of these being in smaller applications such as flashlights and related items.
It will be understood of course that a single diode will not produce a white emission because white light is a combination of non-white frequencies. In some LED applications, however, a blue or UV-emitting LED can be used in conjunction with a phosphor to produce white light from a single diode source.
In commercial embodiments of light emitting diodes (e.g., the XBRIGHT™ diodes offered by the assignee herein; Cree, Inc.; Durham, N.C.) recent advances have included an inverted device design. U.S. Pat. No. 6,740,906 discusses aspects of this design as does U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20020123164. The contents of both of these are incorporated entirely herein by reference. In this type of design, the Group III active layers are grown (typically epitaxially) on a silicon carbide substrate. Light emitting diodes of this type are then mounted with their epitaxial layers (“epilayers”) “down” rather than “up”; i.e., the silicon carbide portions forms the display face of the mounted device while the epitaxial layers are mounted to and face a circuit or wiring most typically referred to as a “lead frame” that provides the electrical connection to the diode. The silicon carbide-up orientation increases light extraction from the device as set forth in the '906 patent and the '164 publication.
Silicon carbide can also be conductively doped. This provides advantages in comparison to sapphire based Group III nitride diodes. Because sapphire is an insulator, two top wire bonds are typically required to mount a working sapphire-based diode. In comparison, silicon carbide devices can be “vertically” oriented; i.e., with ohmic contacts on opposite ends of the device. Such vertical orientation is directly analogous to diodes formed in other conductive semiconductor materials such as gallium arsenide (GaAs), and thus the same mounting orientations and techniques can be used.
Although these “inverted” devices have successfully provided significant practical and commercial improvements, their “epilayer-down” orientation requires different, and to some extent more sophisticated, mounting on lead frames. In particular, because the active portion (p-n junction, multiple quantum well, etc.) is positioned closely adjacent to the lead frame, avoiding short circuits or other undesired interactions between the active portion and lead frame becomes more difficult.
For example, conventional LEDs (including Group III nitride on SiC devices) are often mounted on the lead frame using conductive silver epoxy. Silver epoxy is a mixture of more than about 50 percent by weight of microscopic silver particles with epoxy resin precursors. When used to connect electronic devices to circuits (or circuit boards) the silver epoxy provides flexibility, relative ease of handling, conductivity and good heat transfer properties. Because silver epoxy is (purposely) applied as a viscous liquid, it can and will flow accordingly and, unless other steps are taken, will tend to surround lower portions of any diode mounted with it. As noted above, if the active portions are adjacent the lead frame, the flowing silver epoxy can contact the active portion and cause short circuiting or other undesired interactions.
As a result, many conventional light emitting diode mounting techniques are either too difficult, too unreliable or simply unavailable for inverted Group III nitride silicon carbide devices. Other specific techniques (e.g., application Ser. No. 10/840,463 filed May 5, 2004 and now published as Patent Application Publication No. 20050029533) should or must be incorporated to avoid these problems.
As another potential solution, the inverted device can be positioned on some sort of sub-structure, with the sub-structure being attached to the lead frame. Examples include U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20030213965. The sub-structure is included to add sufficient thickness to remove the active portions farther from the lead frame and its silver epoxy or related materials. As set forth in No. 20030213965, however, soldering the device to a substructure can undesirably tilt the device with respect to the sub-structure and thereby exacerbate the short-circuiting problem.
As another problem, the extra thickness resulting from the presence of the substructure is also a disadvantage, because manufacturers of end-use products frequently demand smaller and smaller—including “thinner”—light emitting diodes. Such demand includes, for example, flat-panel displays on small devices such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants (“PDAs”).
Accordingly, it remains a continuing goal to increase the current capacity, light output (power) and light extraction (geometry) capabilities of inverted light emitting diodes while concurrently reducing their size and particularly reducing their thickness. It remains a similar goal to produce such diodes in designs that can be conveniently incorporated into lead frames, packages and circuits in a manner similar or identical to related diodes.
In one aspect, the invention is a wafer structure for high-efficiency inverted chip light emitting diode precursors. The wafer structure comprises a conductive silicon carbide substrate wafer, at least one light-emitting active layer on the substrate, at least one metal contact layer on the light emitting layer, a conductive sub-mounting structure on the metal contact layer, a plurality of ohmic contacts on the surface of the conductive silicon carbide substrate that is opposite from the light emitting active layer, and with the ohmic contacts defining a plurality of light emitting diode precursors.
In another aspect the invention is a method of fabricating and mounting a light emitting diode for high efficiency and extraction. In this aspect, the method comprises adding a light emitting active portion of wide-bandgap semiconductor material to a conductive silicon carbide substrate, joining the added active portion to a conductive sub-mounting structure, and removing a portion of the silicon carbide substrate opposite the added active portion to thereby reduce the overall thickness of the joined substrate, active portion and sub-mounting structure. The resulting sub-mounting structure can be joined to a lead frame with the active portion positioned between the silicon carbide substrate and the sub-mounting structure to thereby use the sub-mounting structure to separate the active portion from the lead frame and avoid undesired electrical contact between the active portion and the lead frame.
In yet another aspect the method comprises adding a light emitting active layer of wide-bandgap semiconductor material to a conductive silicon carbide substrate wafer, adding at least one metal contact layer to the added active layers, joining the metal contact layer to a conductive sub-mounting wafer, removing a portion of the silicon carbide substrate wafer opposite the added active layers to thereby reduce the overall thickness of the joined wafers, adding ohmic contacts to the reduced silicon carbide substrate wafer and to the sub-mounting wafer to thereby define a plurality of individual diode precursors, separating the diode precursors into individual diodes, and joining the sub-mounting portion of the separated diodes to respective lead frames with the active layers positioned between the silicon carbide substrate and the sub-mounting structure to thereby use the sub-mounting structure to separate the active layers from the lead frame and avoid undesired electrical contact between the active layers and the lead frame.
In yet another aspect, the method comprises adding a light emitting active layer of wide-bandgap semiconductor material to a conductive silicon carbide substrate wafer, joining the added active layer to a conductive sub-mounting wafer, adding ohmic contacts to the reduced silicon carbide substrate wafer and to the sub-mounting wafer to thereby define a plurality of individual diode precursors, separating the diode precursors into individual diodes, and joining the sub-mounting portion of the separated diodes to respective lead frames with the active layers positioned between the silicon carbide substrate and the sub-mounting structure to thereby use the sub-mounting structure to separate the active layers from the lead frame and avoid undesired electrical contact between the active layers and the lead frame.
The foregoing and other objects and advantages of the invention and the manner in which the same are accomplished will become clearer based on the followed detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
In a broad sense the invention is an aluminum indium gallium nitride based light emitting region sandwiched between a semiconducting or conducting substrate and a thin silicon carbide layer. When mounted, the conducting substrate forms the bottom of the device and this bottom portion has a thickness adequate to allow the use of epoxy pastes for chip attachment into a package. The upper silicon carbide layer is thin enough to limit the final device thickness to less than about 150 μm, which is adequate for most surface mount light emitting diode applications. This results in a thin, high-brightness light emitting diode chip with low forward voltage that can be attached by the manufacturer with standard electrically conducting epoxy pastes and that has a single wire bond on top. The design results in a more Lambertian emitting pattern. As a result, coupling to a phosphor for conversion to white light is expected to be more efficient over the use of currently available silicon carbide-based chips. The invention also allows for increasing size without the loss of efficiency.
The invention has application for light emitting diode displays, indicators, light conversion, small and large chips, and any other light emitting diode applications.
Certain method aspects of the invention are illustrated in
If both the original conductive wafer 20 and the second substrate wafer 26 are “thin” to start with, it will be understood that neither will need to be trimmed any further in the following steps described herein. Thinner substrates are, however, weaker in accordance with well understood principles of mechanical strengths of objects with respect to their geometric sizes and proportions. Thus, the use of “thicker” wafers combined with thinning steps is presently preferred.
As illustrated in
Additionally, although not illustrated in these schematic Figures, the divided edges of the device precursors 31 that result from the etching, can be passivated (typically with silicon oxide or silicon nitride) to isolate and protect the junctions or other necessary portions of the active layers 21 and 22.
As another option that is not illustrated at this point in these drawings, the ohmic contact that is later illustrated as 33 in
In another aspect, the invention is a wafer structure for high-efficiency inverted chip light emitting diode precursors. In this aspect, the invention comprises the conductive silicon carbide substrate wafer 20, with at least one light-emitting active layer on the substrate wafer.
In preferred embodiments the sub-mounting structure includes yet another metal solder layer 25 for attaching the sub-mounting structure to the silicon carbide wafer 20 and its epitaxial and metal layers. The metal layers can also be or include a mirror layer (i.e., a highly reflective metal) and can include etch stop metals for the purposes described with respect to the method aspects of the invention.
A plurality of ohmic contacts 30 are on the surface of the conductive silicon carbide substrate that is opposite from the light emitting active layers 21 and 22, with the ohmic contacts defining a plurality of light emitting diode precursors broadly designated at 31. Similarly, and as illustrated in
In a related embodiment that is schematically illustrated in
In preferred embodiments, the conductive silicon carbide substrate wafer 20 is a single crystal and has a polytype selected from the group consisting of the 3C, 4H, 6H and 15R polytypes of silicon carbide. Similarly, the light-emitting active layers are Group III nitrides, with aluminum indium gallium nitride (AlxInyGa1-x-yN, where 0≦x,y≦1) being particularly preferred, and indium gallium nitride (InyGa1-yN, exclusive of y=0) being most preferred.
In the preferred embodiments the silicon carbide single crystal wafer 20 is no more than 25 microns thick between the ohmic contacts 30 and the active layers 21 and 22 active portion, and in the most preferred embodiments, the total dimension between and including the ohmic contacts 30 and 33 is no more than 100 microns.
In order to illustrate the sequence of the method aspects of the invention,
First,
Other metals can be included in this portion of the structure, either in place of or in addition to those already described. For example, the barrier layer 42 can be formed of multiple layers, each of which can be a single metal or combination or alloy of two or more metals. In preferred embodiments, the barrier layer 42 is formed of such combinations or alloys of titanium, tungsten and platinum. The metals described with respect to
With the ohmic contact layer 40 and the mirror layer 41 in place and encapsulated by the barrier layer 42,
In
In
In
Finally, in
As further noted elsewhere, the vertical structure of the resulting device (ohmic contacts at opposite ends rather than facing the same direction) permits the use of a single wire contact 36 for completing the electrical connections to the diode 31.
In comparison,
The SEM photograph of
In the drawings and specification there has been set forth a preferred embodiment of the invention, and although specific terms have been employed, they are used in a generic and descriptive sense only and not for purposes of limitation, the scope of the invention being defined in the claims.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
2001622 | McCaa | May 1935 | A |
4703219 | Mesquida | Oct 1987 | A |
4902356 | Noguchi et al. | Feb 1990 | A |
4912532 | Cook et al. | Mar 1990 | A |
5103271 | Izumiya et al. | Apr 1992 | A |
5376580 | Kish et al. | Dec 1994 | A |
5416342 | Edmond et al. | May 1995 | A |
5502316 | Kish et al. | Mar 1996 | A |
5739554 | Edmond et al. | Apr 1998 | A |
5838706 | Edmond et al. | Nov 1998 | A |
5912477 | Negley | Jun 1999 | A |
5985687 | Bowers et al. | Nov 1999 | A |
6071795 | Cheung et al. | Jun 2000 | A |
6100104 | Haerle et al. | Aug 2000 | A |
6120600 | Edmond et al. | Sep 2000 | A |
6187606 | Edmond et al. | Feb 2001 | B1 |
6201262 | Edmond et al. | Mar 2001 | B1 |
6258699 | Chang et al. | Jul 2001 | B1 |
6303405 | Yoshida et al. | Oct 2001 | B1 |
6335263 | Cheung et al. | Jan 2002 | B1 |
6365429 | Kneissl et al. | Apr 2002 | B1 |
6373077 | Edmond et al. | Apr 2002 | B1 |
6403985 | Fan et al. | Jun 2002 | B1 |
6410940 | Jiang et al. | Jun 2002 | B1 |
6410942 | Thibeault et al. | Jun 2002 | B1 |
6420199 | Coman et al. | Jul 2002 | B1 |
6420242 | Cheung et al. | Jul 2002 | B1 |
6448102 | Kneissl et al. | Sep 2002 | B1 |
6459100 | Doverspike et al. | Oct 2002 | B1 |
6465809 | Furukawa et al. | Oct 2002 | B1 |
6468824 | Chen et al. | Oct 2002 | B2 |
6559075 | Kelly et al. | May 2003 | B1 |
6562648 | Wong et al. | May 2003 | B1 |
6607931 | Streubel | Aug 2003 | B2 |
6610551 | Doverspike et al. | Aug 2003 | B1 |
6635503 | Andrews et al. | Oct 2003 | B2 |
6649437 | Yang et al. | Nov 2003 | B1 |
6657236 | Thibeault et al. | Dec 2003 | B1 |
6664560 | Emerson et al. | Dec 2003 | B2 |
6677173 | Ota | Jan 2004 | B2 |
6716654 | Hsu et al. | Apr 2004 | B2 |
6734033 | Emerson et al. | May 2004 | B2 |
6740604 | Kelly et al. | May 2004 | B2 |
6740906 | Slater, Jr. et al. | May 2004 | B2 |
6747298 | Slater, Jr. et al. | Jun 2004 | B2 |
6757314 | Kneissl et al. | Jun 2004 | B2 |
6786390 | Yang et al. | Sep 2004 | B2 |
6791119 | Slater, Jr. et al. | Sep 2004 | B2 |
6800500 | Coman et al. | Oct 2004 | B2 |
6800876 | Edmond et al. | Oct 2004 | B2 |
6806112 | Horng et al. | Oct 2004 | B1 |
6809341 | Hsu et al. | Oct 2004 | B2 |
6815312 | Furukawa et al. | Nov 2004 | B2 |
6821804 | Thibeault et al. | Nov 2004 | B2 |
6825501 | Edmond et al. | Nov 2004 | B2 |
6846686 | Saeki et al. | Jan 2005 | B2 |
6849878 | Bader et al. | Feb 2005 | B2 |
20020022290 | Kong et al. | Feb 2002 | A1 |
20020068373 | Lo et al. | Jun 2002 | A1 |
20020121642 | Doverspike et al. | Sep 2002 | A1 |
20020123164 | Slater et al. | Sep 2002 | A1 |
20020197764 | Uemura et al. | Dec 2002 | A1 |
20030015721 | Slater et al. | Jan 2003 | A1 |
20030045015 | Slater, Jr. et al. | Mar 2003 | A1 |
20030132701 | Sato et al. | Jul 2003 | A1 |
20030173602 | Hsu et al. | Sep 2003 | A1 |
20030197170 | Bader et al. | Oct 2003 | A1 |
20040004226 | Eisert et al. | Jan 2004 | A1 |
20040012027 | Keller et al. | Jan 2004 | A1 |
20040033638 | Bader et al. | Feb 2004 | A1 |
20040072382 | Kelly et al. | Apr 2004 | A1 |
20040124429 | Stokes et al. | Jul 2004 | A1 |
20040135158 | Hon | Jul 2004 | A1 |
20050006669 | Mishra et al. | Jan 2005 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country |
---|---|---|
1 263 058 | Dec 2002 | EP |
61059886 | Mar 1986 | JP |
11238913 | Aug 1999 | JP |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
20060060877 A1 | Mar 2006 | US |