Correlation of angular light profiles of light-emitting diodes to spatial spontaneous emissions from photonic crystals

Abstract

Typically, photonic crystal light-emitting diodes employ shallow nanostructures which only higher-order optical modes can be interacted with. Here, both the shallow photonic crystals and nanohole arrays (etched through active layers) are fabricated, which serve to diffract, respectively, higher and lower optical modes in the active layer. Our results indicate that the photon lifetime can be controlled by adjusting the geometry of shallow nanostructures and nanohole arrays. The angular emission profiles are thus determined by the dominance of higher- and lower-order mode quality factors in the band structure.