Fluorescent SiC with pseudo-periodic moth-eye structures

White light-emitting diodes (LEDs) consisting of a nitride-based blue LED chip and phosphor are very promising candidates for the general lighting applications as energy-saving sources. Recently, donor-acceptor doped fluorescent SiC has been proven as a highly efficient wavelength converter material much superior to the phosphors in terms of high color rendering index value and long lifetime. The light extraction efficiency of the fluorescent SiC based all semiconductor LED light sources is usually low due to the large refractive index difference between the semiconductor and air. In order to enhance the extraction efficiency, we present a simple method to fabricate the pseudo-periodic moth-eye structures on the surface of the fluorescent SiC. A thin gold layer is deposited on the fluorescent SiC first. Then the thin gold layer is treated by rapid thermal processing. After annealing, the thin gold layer turns into discontinuous nano-islands. The average size of the islands is dependent on the annealing condition which could be well controlled. By using the reactive-ion etching, pseudo-periodic moth-eye structures would be obtained using the gold nano-islands as a mask layer. Reactive-ion etching conditions are carefully optimized to obtain the lowest surface reflection performance of the fabricated structures. Significant omnidirectional luminescence enhancement (226.0 %) was achieved from the angle-resolved photoluminescence measurement, which proves the pseudo-periodic moth-eye structure as an effective and simple method to enhance the extraction efficiency of fluorescent SiC based white LEDs.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.