APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 88, 043507 2006

Thermally stable and highly reflective AgAl alloy for enhancing light
extraction efficiency in GaN light-emitting diodes
Ja-Yeon Kim, Seok-In Na, Ga-Young Ha, Min-Ki Kwon, Il-Kyu Park,
Jae-Hong Lim, and Seong-Ju Parka
Department of Materials Science and Engineering and National Research Laboratory for Nanophotonic
Semiconductors, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 500-712, Korea

Min-Ho Kim, Dongyoul Choi, and Kyeongik Min

Future Strategy Team, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Suwon 443-743, Korea

Received 31 August 2005; accepted 5 December 2005; published online 26 January 2006
The properties of a AgAl alloy reflector layer deposited on a p-GaN layer for use in high-efficiency
GaN flip-chip light-emitting diodes FCLEDs were investigated. The AgAl layer showed good
adhesion properties compared to a layer of Ag on p-GaN. In addition, no agglomeration was found,
indicating that the AgAl layer is thermally stable due to the formation of oxidized Al on the surface
and at the interface of the AgAl layer. The InGaN/ GaN multiquantum well light-emitting diode with
the annealed AgAl layer showed good I-V characteristic and an enhanced optical output power
compared to that with an annealed Ag layer due to the high reflectivity 86.7% at 465 nm, smooth
surface after annealing, and good Ohmic property of AgAl. These results clearly indicate that a
AgAl layer on p-GaN constitutes a promising reflector and Ohmic scheme for achieving
high-brightness FCLEDs. 2006 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2168264
As the brightness of GaN-based light-emitting diodes
LEDs has increased, GaN LEDs have recently attracted
considerable interest for use in applications such as displays,
traffic signals, and solid-state lighting.1,2 It has been shown
that a flip-chip LED FCLED configuration is very effective
in enhancing light extraction efficiency and that they can be
used extensively in high power and high efficiency LEDs.2,3
In order to develop high-performance FCLEDs, the formation of high-quality p-Ohmic contacts that have a combination of high reflectivity, low contact resistance, and good
thermal stability is a key factor. In general, silver Ag has
been widely used for FCLEDs because of its high reflectance
in visible light and reasonable ohmic behavior.4,5 However,
Ag suffers from poor adhesion to p-GaN due to agglomeration during the annealing process,68 leading to a deterioration in its electrical and optical properties3,9,10 Therefore, thin
transparent layers such as nickel-oxide and transparent
conducting oxide are inserted between Ag and p-GaN in order to improve the adhesion of Ag to p-GaN and to decrease
agglomeration.35,9,10 However, thin transparent interlayers
can absorb light generated from the InGaN/ GaN multiple
quantum well MQW,11,12 resulting in a decrease in the
optical power of LEDs. Aluminum Al has also been
investigated as a reflector material because it has high reflectance, good adhesion, and reasonable thermal stability.
However Al shows poor Ohmic properties on the p-GaN
because of its lower work function Al = 4.26 eV than Ag
Ag = 4.74 eV.3,9,13
In this study, we investigated a AgAl alloy reflector layer
on p-GaN without the use of a transparent interlayer for high
efficiency GaN FCLEDs. The optical output power of
FCLEDs was significantly enhanced when the AgAl layer
was used, compared to a Ag layer. This result can be attributed to the good adhesion of AgAl to p-GaN and the improvement in thermal stability without degrading the Ohmic
a

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; electronic mail:

sjpark@gist.ac.kr

properties. This indicates that AgAl represents a promising

reflector material for high efficiency and high power GaN
FCLEDs.
To investigate the properties of a AgAl reflector layer on
the p-GaN, GaN LEDs with a 465 nm emission were grown
by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition on a c-plane sapphire substrate. The GaN LED consisted of the following
layers: a 2-m-thick Si-doped GaN layer; a MQW active
layer consisting of undoped InGaN wells and undoped GaN
barriers; and a Mg-doped p-GaN with a thickness of 0.2 m.
A hole concentration of 3 1017 cm3 was obtained after
thermally annealing the p-GaN. For electrode formation,
mesa patterns were formed by inductively coupled plasma
etching using Cl2 / CH4 / H2 / Ar gases. Ti/ Al layer
30/ 80 nm was next deposited on the n-GaN as an n-pad
electrode and an Ag0.95Al0.05 alloy film 200 nm was deposited as a p-pad reflector electrode on the p-GaN by electronbeam evaporation. For a comparative study, a Ag contact
layer 200 nm was also deposited on p-GaN as a p-pad
reflector electrode. The electrical and optical properties of
the LEDs were measured using a parameter analyzer HP
4155A and a calibrated Si photodiode connected to an
optical power meter, respectively.
Figures 1a and 1d show optical microscope images of
the LEDs with Ag and AgAl layers after a lift-off process for
the p-electrode, respectively. The Ag layer peeled off from
the p-GaN after the lift-off process, while the AgAl layer
remained on p-GaN without peeling off. This indicates the
AgAl layer has better adhesion to the p-GaN compared to the
Ag layer. Figures 1b and 1c show scanning electron microscopy SEM images of the Ag layer before and after
annealing at 500 C for 1 min in air, respectively. The surface morphology of the Ag layer was severely roughened
after annealing, resulting in hole formation and agglomeration. Figures 1e and 1f show the SEM images of the AgAl
layer before and after annealing at 500 C for 1 min in air,
respectively. The agglomeration observed on the Ag surface
Fig. 1c, disappeared on the AgAl alloy surface Fig. 1f

0003-6951/2006/884/043507/3/$23.00
88, 043507-1
2006 American Institute of Physics
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043507-2

Kim et al.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 043507 2006

FIG. 1. Optical microscope images of LEDs with a a Ag layer and d a

AgAl reflector electrode layer; SEM images of b an as-deposited Ag layer,
c a Ag layer annealed at 500 C for 1 min in air, e an as-deposited AgAl
layer, and f a AgAl layer annealed at 500 C for 1 min in air.

indicating that it has excellent adhesion and thermal stability

on the p-GaN layer compared to a Ag layer. The mechanisms
of the increased adhesion on p-GaN and the suppression of
agglomeration of Ag using AgAl can be explained on the
basis of the Auger electron spectroscopy AES and x-ray
photoemission spectroscopy XPS data.
Figure 2 shows AES spectra of samples of as-deposited
AgAl Fig. 2a and annealed AgAl Fig. 2b. For the annealed AgAl sample, a significant Al segregation with oxygen was observed on the surface and at the interface between
AgAl and p-GaN, compared to the as-deposited AgAl
sample. This suggests that with oxidized-Al can be formed
on the surface and at the interface of a AgAl layer during the
thermal annealing process in an air ambient.
The formation of oxidized-Al on the AgAl surface was
also confirmed by XPS analysis of an AgAl film. Figure 3
shows the binding energies for the Al 2p and O 1s core level
peaks of the AgAl layer after annealing at 500 C for 1 min
in air. Two Al 2p core level peaks were observed at the
binding energies of 73.1 and 76.2 eV from the AgAl surface.
And an Al 2p peak at 73.1 eV and a weak peak at 75.5 eV
were observed from the AgAl after removing a 100-nm-thick
layer of AgAl by sputtering. It is known that the binding
energies of Al 2p core level peak are in a range of 72.473.1
eV for Al and in a range of 75.976.6 eV for oxidized Al.14,15
Therefore, the Al 2p core level peak at 73.1 eV is believed to
be from Al and the Al 2p core level peaks at 76.2 and 75.5
eV are presumably from oxidized Al. As shown Fig. 3b, the

FIG. 3. XPS spectra of the AgAl after annealing at 500 C for 1 min in air
at the surface of AgAl dashed line and the bulk region of AgAl after
100-nm-thick AgAl was removed from the surface solid line: a Al 2p
core level and b O 1s core level spectra.

O 1s core level peaks at the surface of AgAl and the bulk

region of AgAl after removing a 100-nm-thick layer of AgAl
from the surface are observed at 533.1 and 531.8 eV, respectively. It is known that the binding energy of the O 1s core
level peak is a range of 529.9534.8 eV for oxidized Al.14,15
The XPS intensity of the O 1s core level peak of bulk AgAl
is very weak compared to that of the AgAl surface, as shown
in Fig. 3b, indicating that negligible amounts of oxidized
Al are formed in the bulk AgAl. The Al 2p core level peak at
73.1 eV Fig. 3a and the weak intensity of the O 1s core
level peak at 531.8 eV Fig. 3b observed from the bulk
region of AgAl layer indicate that most of the Al is present as
metallic Al and not as oxidized-Al. The AES and XPS results
Figs. 2 and 3 show that the Al in the AgAl segregated to the
top and bottom side of a AgAl film and reacted with oxygen
in air to form a thin layer of oxidized-Al on the surface and
at the interface of the AgAl layer, which is reported to have
a high thermal stability.16,17 The effect of oxidized-Al on
electrical characteristics of the AgAl layer was also investigated by measuring the film resistivity and glancing angle
x-ray diffraction GXRD. The resistivity of as-deposited and
annealed film was 1.38 105 cm and 1.2 105 cm,
respectively. These results show that the formation of
oxidized-Al after annealing has not affected the deterioration
of the electrical property in AgAl film. The resistivity was
slightly decreased presumably due to the improvement of
crystallity by the thermal annealing process. The oxidized-Al
which was detected in AES and XPS spectra was not observed in the GXRD data not shown. This was attributed to
the very small amount of oxidized Al which was also evidenced by the small changes of resistivity caused by the
thermal annealing process. These results, therefore, indicate
that the oxidized-Al formed in the annealing process in an air
ambient suppresses the agglomeration of Ag and increases
the extent of adhesion between the AgAl layer and p-GaN
without deterioration of the electrical property.
The characteristics of GaN LEDs with Ag and AgAl layers were examined, in order to better understand, the effect
of metal reflector layers on LED performance. Figure 4
shows the typical I-V characteristics of LEDs for the Ag and
AgAl layers before and after annealing. The forward voltages of LEDs with the Ag and AgAl layers after a thermal
annealing at 300 and 500 C in air for 1 min were greatly
improved to 3.4 V at an input current of 20 mA compared to

FIG. 2. AES depth profile of a AgAl 200 nm layer on p-GaN: a before

and b after annealing at 500 C for 1 min in air.
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043507-3

Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 043507 2006

Kim et al.

FIG. 4. Typical I-V characteristics of LEDs with the Ag and AgAl layers on
p-GaN annealed at different temperatures. The inset shows the reflectance of
the Ag and AgAl layer before and after annealing at 500 C for 1 min in air.

those for LEDs with as-deposited reflectors. The series resistances of the LED with a AgAl layer after annealing at 300
and 500 C were estimated to be 21.2 and 20.8 , while
those of a LED with a Ag layer after annealing at 300 and
500 C were 20.5 and 22.7 , respectively. These results indicate that the electrical characteristics of AgAl/ p-GaN are
improved while that of Ag/ p-GaN is degraded with increasing annealing temperatures. The improvement of the I-V
curve of the LED with a AgAl layer after annealing can be
attributed to the good thermal stability of AgAl, as shown in
Fig. 1f. The specific contact resistances were calcualted
from plots of the measured resistance versus the spacing
between the circular transmission line method pads.18
The specific contact resistance was determined to be
5.3 104 cm2 for AgAl contacts annealed at 500 C under an air ambient for 1 min. To study the optical properties
of the AgAl layer, the optical reflectance of the Ag and AgAl
layers was measured before and after annealing at 500 C.
The inset in Fig. 4 shows that the reflectance of an asdeposited Ag layer is 76.3% at 465 nm, while that for the Ag
layer annealed at 500 C is 37.3%. This can be attributed to
agglomeration of the Ag layer after annealing. However, the
reflectance of the AgAl layer was improved from 82.5% to
86.7% when the AgAl layer was annealed at 500 C.
Figure 5 shows the light output-current L-I characteristics of FCLEDs with Ag and AgAl layers which had been
annealed at 300 and 500 C for 1 min in air. Figure 5a
shows that the optical output power of a LED with a Ag
layer decreases with increasing annealing temperature. This
result can be attributed to the decrease in reflectance, which
is largely due to the formation of holes and agglomeration
after the thermal annealing of the Ag layer. Figure 5b, however, shows that the light output power of LEDs with AgAl
layers is enhanced with increasing annealing temperature due
to the higher thermal stability of the AgAl layer compared to
the Ag layer.
In summary, the AgAl reflector layer scheme was investigated, in an attempt to enhance the adhesion, thermal stability, and Ohmic property of high efficiency FCLEDs.
InGaN/ GaN MQW FCLEDs with AgAl layers showed a low
series resistance and a high optical power after thermal annealing at 500 C. The AES and XPS analysis showed that
the improvement in the surface morphology of AgAl after
annealing can be attributed to the formation of an
oxidized-Al layer on the surface and at the interface of the

FIG. 5. L-I characteristics of the LEDs with a Ag layer before and after
annealing at 500 C for 1 min in air and b AgAl layer before and after
annealing at 500 C for 1 min in air.

AgAl and p-GaN. These results indicate that the AgAl alloy
is a promising reflector and ohmic scheme for high power
and high efficiency FCLEDs.
This work was supported by the National Research
Laboratory program for Nanophotonic Semiconductors and
the Central R&D Institute of Samsung Electro-Mechanics in
Korea.

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