Enhancement of light extraction efficiency of GaN-based light-emitting diodes by ZnO nanorods with different sizes.

The improvement of the optical output power of GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) was achieved by employing nano-sized flat-top hexagonal ZnO rods. ZnO nanorods (NRs) with the average diameters of 250, 350, and 580 nm were grown on p-GaN top surfaces by a simple wet-chemical method at relatively low temperature (90 degrees C) to investigate the effect of the diameter of ZnO NRs on the light extraction efficiency. Consequently, the enhancement by the factor of as high as 2.63 in the light output intensity at 20 mA for the LED with 350 nm ZnO NRs was demonstrated without the increase in the operation voltage compared to the reference LED.