The authors report on InGaN microcavity light-emitting diodes with an effective thickness of similar to 450 nm at the emission wavelength of similar to 415 nm. The starting material for the flip-chip laser lift-off device is a structure with an active region embedding six InGaN/GaN quantum wells, similar to 60-nm-thick AlGaN, and a GaN template grown on a c-plane sapphire substrate. High-precision control of the final microcavity thickness was facilitated by SF6-based selective inductively coupled plasma etching on the flipped material with an etch rate of >= 5:1 for GaN:AlxGa1-xN, where x >= 0.15. Pronounced microcavity effects were observed by angular measurements, in agreement with the theoretical cavity-mode dispersion characteristics. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.