Reliability investigation of light-emitting diodes via low frequency noise characteristics

Investigation of changes of operation and noise characteristics during aging process of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has been carried out. Several groups of different design (different optics) LEDs based on different materials (nitride-based blue and white LEDs, phosphide-based red LEDs) have been investigated. It is found that leakage current components appear due to LED's defects and their affect is observed as increase of both the low frequency electrical noise intensity and non-ideality factor of current-leakage characteristic in small current region. No considerable changes of light intensity characteristics during LEDs aging have been observed. Noise modeling, spectral and correlation analysis of optical and electrical fluctuations show on partly correlated optical and electrical fluctuations caused by defects in the active region of the LED. Degradation processes of investigated LEDs foremost occur in the diode chip and lead to the leakage current that has important affect to the electrical fluctuation level, but practically has a weak influence to the light emission properties of LED. Phosphorous layer of white LEDs and additional optical elements have no significant influence to the reliability of investigated LEDs under given aging conditions.