Hindawi Publishing Corporation

International Journal of Photoenergy

Volume 2014, Article ID 278263, 3 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/278263

Editorial
Solid-State Lighting with High Brightness, High Efficiency,
and Low Cost
Ray-Hua Horng,1 Kei May Lau,2 Hao-Chung Kuo,3 and Nelson Tansu4
1

Graduate Institute of Precision Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan
Photonics Technology Center, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong
3
Department of Photonics and Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
4
Center for Photonics and Nanoelectronics, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem,
PA 18015, USA
2

Correspondence should be addressed to Ray-Hua Horng; [email protected] and Nelson Tansu; [email protected]
Received 21 August 2014; Accepted 21 August 2014; Published 7 September 2014
Copyright 2014 Ray-Hua Horng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In order to achieve the advanced lighting with the energysaving and environmental-protecting capabilities, the technologies of solid-state lighting have been developed rapidly.
In all solid-state lighting applications, light-emitting diode
(LED) is the most popular technique due to its advantages
of small volume, long lifetime, high reliability, low power
consumption, and nonpollution.
The progress in solid-state lighting has been driven
by innovations in wide range of technologies in materials,
devices, and novel concepts [15]. In addition to the progress
in visible InGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) based
on III-nitride based semiconductor, the improved understanding in the AlGaN-based LEDs [6, 7] has also resulted
in new understanding on the device physics of III-nitride
semiconductor physics which in turn results in new concept
and approaches to handle the limitation in the fields of
nitride-based LEDs. Several of these concepts have resulted in
new approaches to suppress the charge separation effect [8, 9],
carrier leakage process [1014], light extraction issue [1517],
and Auger processes [1821] in the InGaN-based LEDs. The
improved understanding on the fundamental properties of
InGaN as active regions has resulted in the ability to advance
this field into practical technologies being implemented in the
daily technologies used in our society.
In this special issue, the editors attempt to bring some
of the recent advances in the field of device engineering

and applications of III-nitride based LEDs with the goals

of achieving high brightness and low-cost approaches. Up
to now, the nitride-based materials are maturely developed to apply for LED applications. However, to obtain
the LED devices with high brightness, high efficiency,
and low cost, there are still some techniques to be
improved, especially for the nitride-epilayer growth with
low defect density and device fabrication with high heat
dissipation.
In this special issue, there are seven contributed papers
to discuss these issues from the LED epilayer quality to
the high efficiency package. The implementation and test of
LED-based lamp for lighthouse application were discussed
at the system level (Implementation and test of a LEDbased lamp for a lighthouse by L. Mercatelli et al.). Such
applications of LED in lighthouse have different requirement
from those used in general illumination. The important new
application from LED will broaden the new potential innovations required in enabling this technology to be suitable for
implementation.
The investigation of novel phosphor material for converting blue/UV LEDs into white LEDs was also discussed
specifically for investigating the color rendering index and
its thermal stability (Color rendering index thermal stability improvement of glass-based phosphor-converted white
light-emitting diodes for solid-state lighting by C.-C. Tsai).

International Journal of Photoenergy

Phosphor-based materials are important, and the understanding of its stability at high temperature for ensuring
stability in color rendering index in white LEDs is crucial for
low-cost white LED.
The use of ZnO:YAG based metal-insulator-sem-iconductor (MIS) white LEDs was also reported with various
insulator designs (Low-cost ZnO:YAG-based metal-insulatorsemiconductor white light-emitting diodes with various insulators by L.-C. Chen et al.). Specifically, the authors investigated the effect of various thicknesses of the silica and
MnZnO based insulator on the MIS structure for LED
applications.
Recent works have shown the importance of growing
GaN-based LEDs on nanopatterned substrates [2224], and
the two related works were reported in this special issue
(Performance of InGaN light-emitting diodes fabricated on
patterned sapphire substrates with modified top-tip cone
shapes by H.-H. Hsueh et al. and Void shapes controlled
by using interruption-free epitaxial lateral overgrowth of GaN
films on patterned 2 AlN/sapphire template by Y.-A.
Chen et al.). The use of shape-engineered patterned sapphire
substrate and patterned silica mask for achieving improved
epitaxy in GaN LEDs was reported (Performance of InGaN
light-emitting diodes fabricated on patterned sapphire substrates with modified top-tip cone shapes by H.-H. Hsueh
et al. and Void shapes controlled by using interruption-free
epitaxial lateral overgrowth of GaN films on patterned 2
AlN/sapphire template by Y.-A. Chen et al.). The thermal
management is an important issue for high power LEDs,
and the use of diamond-like carbon heat-spreading layer was
reported (Thermal characteristics of InGaN/GaN flip-chip
light emitting diodes with diamond-like carbon heat-spreading
layers by P.-Y. Tsai et al.).
The investigations of high-voltage LEDs in flip chip configurations have tremendous interests and potential impact
for enabling reduced droop operation up to high power
operation (Efficiency and droop improvement in GaN-based
high-voltage flip chip LEDs by Y.-C. Chiang et al.). The use of
high voltage design enables the low current density while the
total output power can be accomplished. The droop issue has
been one of the key limitations in LED development for lowcost applications, and the high voltage LED has the potential
for addressing this droop issue from the circuit and systems
level innovation in new solid-state lighting device systems.
We hope that the special issue will be of value for the
research community in particular in driving this important
topic on solid-state lighting. The great potential and promise
of solid-state lighting are coming to reality, and the drive
for innovation for achieving high brightness at low cost is
important for enabling market penetration of this technology.

Ray-Hua Horng
Kei May Lau
Hao-Chung Kuo
Nelson Tansu

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