Tunable, full color tunnel junction nanowire light emitting diodes for smart lighting and display applications

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This project is related to the development of ultrahigh efficiency full color light emitting diodes (LEDs) on low cost, large area substrates for applications in the emerging solid state lighting, full-color displays, and consumer electronics. Today, the global LED market has already reached over 15 billion USD, with an annual growth rate of more than 20%. However, making efficient full color LEDs still represents one of the biggest challenges we face. The external quantum efficiency of current organic LEDs (OLEDs) or GaN-based inorganic LEDs is generally in the range of 20-30%, or less. In this project, we propose to develop InGaN/GaN/AlGaN dot-in-a-wire core-shell LEDs on highly reflective Ag layers on Si, which can lead to an extremely large external quantum efficiency (>60%) and can therefore break the efficiency bottleneck of conventional LED devices. With the use of tunnel junction and selective area growth, we will further demonstrate full color, tunable nanowire LED arrays with extremely low heat generation and negligible efficiency droop for the emerging smart lighting and micro-scale full color displays. Such cascaded tunnel junction LEDs can operate under a large voltage range (~ 3 to 100 V) without the use of any transformers, thereby leading to significantly reduced cost. This project also involves close collaboration with Future Lighting Solutions - one of the world's largest providers of LED lighting components, and Tran Tek, a start-up in the business of LEDs and displays. This project will enable the effective training of at least 3 PhD students, 1 postdoc, and more than 12 undergraduate students in manufacturing, nanomaterials, solid state lighting and displays. We strongly believe it is of imminent interest in launching such a multidisciplinary project, which is poised to provide a paradigm shift in the rapidly evolving lighting, display and consumer electronics industries in Canada.