Improvement of light extraction from patterned polymer encapsulated GaN-based flip-chip light-emitting diodes by imprinting

To improve surface light extraction of GaN-based flip-chip light-emitting diodes (FC-LEDs), we employed an imprint approach of thermosetting polymer for patterning microscale surface grating on the polymer encapsulant. One-dimensional (1-D) and two-dimensional (2-D) taper-like polymer gratings with a period of 6 mu m were successfully realized on encapsulant above the sapphire backplane of GaN LED. By adopting the 1-D and 2-D taper-like grating encapsulant, the improvement of light extraction from the I mm x 1 mm FC-blue LED with a reflective Ag film on the p-side was about 18.5% and 31.9% compared to the LED encapsulated by flat polymer, respectively. To evaluate the concept of a diffraction grating in enhancement of light extraction, we performed a simulation of diffraction based on 1-D rigorous coupled wave analysis with the supporting experiments.