In a method for fabricating a flip-chip light emitting diode device, a submount wafer is populated with a plurality of the light emitting diode dies. Each device die is flip-chip bonded to the submount. Subsequent to the flip-chip bonding, a growth substrate is removed. The entire submount is immersed in the etchant solution, exposed to the light for a prespecified period of time, removed from the solution, dried and diced into a plurality of LEDs. The LEDs are immediately packaged without any further processing.