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

这项创新技术转化伙伴关系（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是使增强现实和虚拟现实（AR/VR）技术以更低的成本实现高视觉质量。AR/VR技术通过沉浸式体验将人与数字世界连接起来，并在许多行业中呈现无限的应用。然而，这些技术面临许多障碍，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，业界正在积极投资微型led技术，其像素尺寸比目前的最先进技术缩小了近一个数量级。从智能手机/手表到大型面板显示器，整个显示行业都需要更高的分辨率，但微型led将通过改变AR/VR使消费者受益最多。然而，微型led显示屏的制造过程非常耗时和劳动密集型，这导致了过高的成本、产量和生产时间。该技术有望大幅降低下一代AR/VR显示器的成本，并将微型led显示器从研究推向市场。该项目提出了一项技术，将推动微型led通过制造障碍进入主流显示器。该技术结合了微图像化方法和创新的发光材料，与现有的半导体制造兼容，并有望显著减少微型led制造的关键步骤。传统的微型LED阵列制造需要在单独的半导体晶圆上处理LED的每种颜色，蓝色，绿色和红色。然后，这些led必须通过人工和容易出错的拾取和放置过程分离并组装在显示基板上。所提出的微型彩色转换器只需要创建一个蓝色微型led阵列，而不需要管理单个部件。颜色转换器吸收高能量的光并发射低能量的光，通过图案化，选择蓝色像素可以变成绿色或红色。该颜色转换器利用金属卤化物钙钛矿半导体，这是一种具有优异光学性能的具有成本效益，可溶液处理的发光材料。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光刻微图像化工艺的不兼容性。所提出的技术通过在生产中使用许多相同的光刻工具实现钙钛矿的微图像化，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。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

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.