Breakdown-induced conductive channel for III-nitride light-emitting devices

III-nitride semiconductor-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have superior physical properties(,) such as high thermal stability and brightness, for application to solid-state lighting sources. With the commercialization of GaN-based LEDs, improving LED reliability is important because they can be affected by electrostatic discharge, reverse leakage, and breakdown. However, research on the reverse bias characteristics of GaN-based LEDs is insufficient. We studied the reverse breakdown mechanism and demonstrated that a local breakdown can form a conductive channel in GaN-based LEDs, which can be expanded to a novel planar-type LED structure without an n-contact electrode. Furthermore, we found that this approach can be applied to AC-controllable light-emitting devices without any AC–DC converter.