Hybrid microcavity light emitting devices by additive manufacturing

该项目旨在开发新的和更有效的发光光电器件，如LED，其发射波长在可见光谱范围内可调，包括绿色和黄色的电流间隙。为了实现这一点，光学微腔器件将利用悬挂在镜子之间的半导体材料来制造，以利用所谓的“强耦合”效应，将两种不同类别的半导体材料聚集在一起，形成精确控制的微结构，其尺寸与光波长相同。工作重点是将氮化镓基半导体材料和其他半导体材料家族（如胶体量子点和发光聚合物）结合在光学微腔结构中，从而在未来产生潜在的更高效率的LED和激光器。虽然这些耦合效应的研究以前需要在实验室条件下进行专业和一次性的制造方法，该项目旨在开发和采用能够制造的大规模工艺来制造这些混合微腔LED。将开发新技术，以在采用转印的增材制造工艺之前从其生长晶片中去除III族氮化物LED。这将用于通过以精确控制的方式将优化的互补材料堆叠在一起来构建混合材料微腔。通过增材制造将这些不同的材料结合在一起，可以组合优化的高效组件，而不会由于不同材料系统的不同加工温度和环境而通常需要妥协。

This project seeks to develop new and more efficient light emitting optoelectronic devices such as LEDs, with emission wavelengths tuneable over the visible spectrum including the current gaps in green and yellow. In order to achieve this, optical microcavity devices will be fabricated with semiconductor materials suspended between mirrors to make use of so called 'strong coupling' effects, bringing two different classes of semiconductor materials together in precisely controlled micro-structures the same size as the wavelength of light. Work will focus on combining gallium nitride based semiconductor materials and other families of semiconductor materials such as colloidal quantum dots and light emitting polymers in optical micro-cavity structures leading to potentially higher efficiency LEDs and lasers in the future.While the study of these coupling effects has previously required specialist and one-off fabrication approaches in laboratory conditions, this project aims to develop and employ manufacturing capable large scale processes to create these hybrid microcavity LEDs. New techniques will be developed to remove III-nitride LEDs from their growth wafers before employing the additive manufacturing process of transfer printing. This will be used to build hybrid material microcavities by stacking optimized complimentary materials together in a precisely controlled manner. Bringing these different materials together by additive manufacturing allows optimized, high efficiency components to be combined without compromises normally required due to the different processing temperatures and environments for different materials systems.