PFI-TT: Enabling Advanced High-Resolution Full-Color Displays with New Color Conversion Technologies

PFI-TT：利用新的色彩转换技术实现先进的高分辨率全彩显示器

• 批准号: 2140788
• 负责人: Lih Lin
• 金额: $ 25万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-02-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2140788&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: PFI; TT; Enabling; Advanced; Resolution

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to enable augmented- and virtual-reality (AR/VR) technologies with high visual quality at lower costs. AR/VR technologies connect people with the digital world through immersive experiences, and present unbounded applications in many industries. However, these technologies face many obstacles, such as limitations in optical clarity and resolution. The display industry is in urgent need of new innovation that can achieve much higher resolutions than what existing technologies deliver. To this end, the industry is actively investing in micro-LED technology, where the pixel size nears an order of magnitude reduction from the current state of the art. Better resolution is desirable across the entire display industry, ranging from smartphones/watches to large panel displays, but micro-LEDs will benefit consumers most by transforming AR/VR. However, the manufacturing process of micro-LED displays is extremely time consuming and labor intensive, which leads to prohibitive costs, yields, and production times. The proposed technology is expected to profoundly reduce the cost of next generation displays for AR/VR and transition micro-LED displays from research to market.The proposed project advances a technology that will propel micro-LEDs through the manufacturing obstacles into mainstream displays. The technology combines a micro-patterning method and innovative light-emitting material, compatible with existing semiconductor manufacturing, and promises to significantly reduce the number of key steps in micro-LED manufacturing. Conventional micro-LED array fabrication requires processing each color of LED, blue, green, and red, on individual semiconductor wafers. These LEDs must then be separated and assembled on a display substrate through the manual and error-prone pick-and-place process. The proposed micro-color converter requires the creation of only a single blue micro-LED array, with no need to manage individual pieces. Color converters absorb light of higher energy and emit lower-energy light, and through patterning, select blue pixels can become green or red. The color converter utilizes metal-halide perovskite semiconductors, a cost-effective, solution-processible light-emitting material with outstanding optical properties. Like other organic materials, one significant challenge with perovskites is their incompatibility with standard photolithographic micro-patterning processes. The proposed technology bridges this gap by enabling micro-patterning of perovskites with many of the same photolithography tools already in production, while protecting the layers during fabrication thus maintaining the material’s high optical quality.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该创新技术转化合作伙伴关系（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是以更低的成本实现具有高视觉质量的增强现实和虚拟现实（AR/VR）技术。 AR/VR技术通过沉浸式体验将人们与数字世界联系起来，并在许多行业中呈现出无限的应用。然而，这些技术面临许多障碍，例如光学清晰度和分辨率的限制。显示器行业迫切需要新的创新，以实现比现有技术更高的分辨率。为此，业界正在积极投资micro-LED技术，其像素尺寸比现有技术水平降低了近一个数量级。从智能手机/手表到大型面板显示器，整个显示器行业都希望获得更高的分辨率，但micro-LED将通过改变AR/VR而使消费者受益最多。然而，微型LED显示器的制造过程极其耗时且劳动密集，这导致了过高的成本、产量和生产时间。该项目预计将大大降低下一代AR/VR显示器的成本，并将微发光二极管显示器从研究转向市场。该项目将推动微发光二极管技术突破制造障碍，成为主流显示器。该技术结合了微图案化方法和创新的发光材料，与现有的半导体制造兼容，并有望显着减少微型LED制造中的关键步骤数量。传统的微LED阵列制造需要在单独的半导体晶片上处理每种颜色的LED，蓝色、绿色和红色。然后，这些LED必须通过手动且容易出错的拾取和放置过程分离并组装在显示器基板上。所提出的微颜色转换器仅需要创建单个蓝色微LED阵列，而不需要管理各个部件。颜色转换器吸收较高能量的光并发射较低能量的光，并且通过图案化，选择的蓝色像素可以变成绿色或红色。该颜色转换器采用金属卤化物钙钛矿半导体，这是一种具有成本效益的、可溶液加工的发光材料，具有出色的光学特性。与其他有机材料一样，钙钛矿的一个重大挑战是它们与标准的微图案化工艺不兼容。该技术通过使用许多已经生产的相同光刻工具实现钙钛矿的微图案化，同时在制造过程中保护层，从而保持材料的高光学质量，从而弥补了这一差距。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。