Patent ID: 8252662

Claim:
A method for fabricating a plurality of light emitting diodes (LEDs) comprising: providing a non-polar or semi-polar bulk crystalline substrate which includes gallium nitride, and which has a front surface and a back surface separated by a first thickness; forming a precursor structure for the LEDs on the substrate by forming an AlGaN filter layer with a lower Al % percentage than that in the overlying layers over the front surface, an n-type layer over the filter layer, an active region layer over the n-type layer, a p-type layer over the active region layer, and a metallization layer over the p-type layer; removing material from the back surface of the substrate to reduce the substrate to a second thickness; dividing the substrate and overlying layers into separate LED devices; mounting the LED devices to a carrier structure having an upper surface with the metallization layer on each LED device in contact with the carrier structure; and etching, using bandgap-selective photoelectrochemical etching, the substrate to a thickness of 3-4 μm.