Effect of surface plasmon coupling with radiating dipole on the polarization characteristics of AlGaN-based light-emitting diodes

The optical polarization characteristics of surface plasmon (SP) coupled AlGaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) are investigated theoretically by analyzing the radiation recombination process and scattering process respectively. For the Al0.5Ga0.5N/Al/Al2O3 slab structure, the relative intensity of TE-polarized and TM-polarized spontaneous emission (SE) rate into the SP mode obviously depends on the thickness of the Al layer. The calculation results show that TM dominated emission will be transformed into TE dominated emission with the decrease of the Al thickness, while the emission intensities of both TE/TM polarizations will decrease significantly. In addition, compared with TM polarized emission, TE polarized emission is easier to be extracted by SP coupling. For the Al0.5Ga0.5N/Al nano-particle structure, the ratio of transmittance for TE/TM polarized emission can reach similar to 3.06, while for the Al free structure, it is only 1.2. Thus, the degree of polarization of SP coupled LED can be improved by the reasonable structural design.