Indium tin oxide-rod/single walled carbon nanotube based transparent electrodes for ultraviolet light-emitting diodes

• Transparent conductive oxide (TCO) electrodes are proposed for UV light-emitting diodes.
• These TCO electrodes are based on evaporated indium tin oxide (ITO)-rods.
• Single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) layers are used as a current spreading layer.
• The proposed TCO electrode structures show more than 90% transmittance at 280 nm.

In this paper, we report a transparent conductive oxide electrode scheme working for ultraviolet light-emitting diodes based on indium tin oxide (ITO)-rod and a single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) layer. We prepared four samples with ITO-rod, SWCNT/ITO-rod, ITO-rod/SWCNT, and SWCNT/ITO-rod/SWCNT structures for comparison. As a result, the sample with SWCNT/ITO-rod/SWCNT structures showed the highest transmittance over 90% at 280 nm and the highest Ohmic behavior (with sheet resistance of 5.33 kΩ/□) in the current–voltage characteristic curves.