Semiconductor light-emitting device and a method of manufacture thereof

Abstract

A semiconductor light-emitting device comprises a semiconductor layer structure disposed over a substrate. The layer structure includes an active region disposed between a first layer and a second layer. One or more cavities are present in the layer structure, each cavity being coincident with a threading dislocation and extending from an upper surface of the layer structure through at least the second layer and the active region. Removing material where a threading dislocation is present provides effective suppression of the tendency of the threading dislocations to act as non-radiative centres, thereby improving the light output efficiency of the device. The device may be manufactured by a first step of selectively etching the layer structure at the locations of one or more threading dislocation to form a pilot cavity at the or each location. A second etching step is applied to increase the depth of each pilot cavity.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.