Sensitivity analysis of electron leakage in III-nitride light-emitting diodes

III-nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs) suffer from efficiency droop, which is partially attributed to electron leakage into the p-doped layers. Only very few direct measurements of such leakage are published. We here analyze leakage measurements on AlGaN LEDs with an emission wavelength near 260 nm. The electron leakage disappears after insertion of a thin undoped electron blocking layer (EBL). In good agreement with these measurements, we show that the electron blocking effect is extremely sensitive not only to the EBL material composition but also to the conduction band offset and to the net polarization, which are both not exactly known. VC 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4799672]