Light output improvement of GaN-based light-emitting diodes grown on Si (111) by a via-thin-film structure *Project supported by the National Key R&D Program (Nos. 2016YFB0400100, 2016YFB0400104), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61534007, 61404156, 61522407, 61604168, 61775230), the Key Frontier Scientific Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. QYZDB-SSW-JSC014), the Science and Technology Service Network Initiative of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Key R&D Program of Jiangsu Province (No. BE2017079), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20160401), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2016M591944). This work was also supported by the Open Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Applications (No. SKLA-2016-01), the Open Fund of the State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics (Nos. IOSKL2016KF04, IOSKL2016KF07), and the Seed Fund from SINANO, CAS (No. Y5AAQ51001). (April 2018)