The science behind varying performance of different colored LEDs

Researchers from the Low Energy Electronic Systems (LEES) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, together with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and National University of Singapore (NUS) have found a method to quantify the distribution of compositional fluctuations in the indium gallium nitride (InGaN) quantum wells (QWs) at different indium concentrations.

Currently, red and amber LEDs are made using the aluminum indium gallium phosphide (AlInGaP) material instead of InGaN due to InGaN's poor performance in the red and amber spectrum caused by the efficiency drop. Understanding and overcoming the efficiency drop is the first step towards developing InGaN LEDs covering the whole visible spectrum that would significantly reduce production costs.