Study on light extraction efficiency of light-emitting diodes having periodically corrugated enhancement structures with different duty cycles

The duty cycle effect on the light extraction efficiency of light-emitting diodes having different periodically corrugated enhancement structures placed opposite to the emission surface was studied. The experimental results were compared with numerical simulation results. The numerical simulation was performed using a rigorous-coupled-wave-analysis method. In the case of common structures such as a patterned-sapphire structure, we found that, in general, extraction efficiency increased drastically when duty cycle was increased from zero, and then it varied relatively slowly as the duty cycle was increased further; after that, the extraction efficiency dropped drastically as the duty cycle approached 100%. However, for a structure that was composed of autocloned-photonic crystals super-imposing on the periodical corrugation, the efficiency increased monotonically with the duty cycle and reached 83.4% (corresponding to 589% enhancement efficiency) when the duty cycle approached 100%. A method for the fabrication of such high-efficiency structures was proposed.