Electrical and Optical Modeling of Gap-Free Microdisplay Based on Pixelated GaN LEDs

Abstract

Micro-sized light emitting diode arrays (μLED array) based on III-Nitride materials have been used for a wide range of applications in technology areas such as self-emissive microdisplays [1], single-chip high voltage alternating current LEDs [2], light sources for optogenetic neuromodulation [3], etc. The superior brightness, contrast, resolution, and reliability of μLED arrays based on III-Nitride semiconductors makes them the best choice among other display systems. For a conventional display system, μLED arrays consist of LED pixels that are separated by forming a physical gap which is used to isolate the current between the pixels. The generated LED arrays were ended up having a non-planner structure [5, 6] that can limit the performance and/or the operability of the LED array such as placing limits on reducing pitch dimensions which leads to decreased resolution, causing surface damage to the mesa structure that limits the yield output of the LED array and also generating mesa sidewalls which reduces the contrast of LED displays. Reducing the pitch dimensions for a conventional display system can be limited with some etching techniques but it can be achieved by introducing isolation barriers (known as planar region) between the LED pixels via ion implantation. The purpose of this work is to prove the idea of using ion implantation species to generate isolation barriers between LED pixels and also to study the effect of those barriers on the operation of μLED arrays by using the Sentaurus TCAD software.