An example tunnel junction ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diode (LED) is described herein. The UV LED can include a mesa structure having at least one of: an n-doped bottom contact region, a p-doped region, and a tunnel junction arranged in contact with the p-doped region. Additionally, a geometry of the mesa structure can be configured to increase respective efficiencies of extracting transverse-electric (TE) polarized light and transverse-magnetic (TM) polarized light from the tunnel junction UV LED. The mesa structure can be configured such that an emitted photon travels less than 10 μm before reaching the inclined sidewall.