High-efficiency Purcell-enhanced mid-infrared light emitting diodes and their arrays

TransWave Photonics proposes to develop GaSb-based mid-infrared quantum-well light emitting diodes (LEDs) with a microcavity design facilitating the Purcell effect. We estimate that internal quantum efficiency of the proposed microcavity LEDs can be enhanced by a factor of ~2-4 due to Purcell enhancement of spontaneous emission rate and reach up to 30-40%. In addition, all optical radiation will be emitted into a single cavity mode that dramatically improves outcoupling efficiency as high as 50%, compared to the conventional mesa type devices exhibiting less than 2% outcoupling efficiency. Altogether, we expect to achieve up to 50 times improvement in wall-plug efficiency of the proposed Purcell LEDs.