Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2011
New ultraviolet (UV) light emitting device structures address the problems of small carrier concentrations and large band-offsets in wide bandgap Aluminum Gallium Nitride (AlGaN) heterostructures through the use of graded epilayers for electron and hole injection. For light emission at 280–290 nm, a multiple-quantum-well separate confinement heterostructure (MQWSCH) employs a graded AlGaN structure for the injection of majority carriers from the metal-semiconductor contact layers into the spacecharge region of the pn-junction with a higher bandgap energy. Sample LED mesa devices were fabricated and have shown light emission of 289 nm under a forward bias of 12V (20mA). These results provide a ‘proof-of-concept’ for this new graded device structure which can be employed for the development of both UV-LEDs and laser diodes.