Light-emitting Pixels Research Articles

Analysis of deformation of thin polyimide film by pre-strained silicone elastomer

In this study, we analyze the deformation of the thin polyimide (PI) film on the pre-strained elastomer. When pre-strained elastomer bonded with pressure-sensitive adhesive (50 µm) and the thin PI film (under 1 μm thickness) containing rigid islands array and released mildly, the elastomer film is restored to its near initial state by the amount of pre-strain. At this time, if the compressive stiffness of the PI film is relatively small compared to the elastomeric film, the deformation occurs as much as the elastomer. In such a case, the PI film generates a wrinkle phenomenon, a special form of the compression behavior of the thin PI film. To prevent pixel area deformation, the PI panel uses rigid material placed in the vicinity of the light-emitting pixels and a metal bus-line matrix placed in the rigid pixel and soft area. However, in this case, when the deformation of the wrinkle-producing area is excessive, it can develop into folds and creases. Hence, PSA and elastomer films are placed on both sides of the thin PI panel containing rigid islands array bridged with a metal bus-line matrix for buckling analysis with the protection of the pixel area.

LEGO-like Assembly of Fibrous Modules for Display Textiles.

Due to their promising advantages over classical rigid devices, the development of display textiles has exciting potential for various fields, including sensor technology, healthcare, and communication. To realize display textiles, it is necessary to prepare light-emitting building blocks at the fiber level and then weave or knit them to form the desired textile structures. However, from a practical viewpoint, it is difficult to continuously weave functional fibers containing light-emitting devices using conventional textile technologies. To address this issue, we introduced fibrous modules that can be assembled like LEGO blocks to realize textile displays. A unique feature of this work is that the light-emitting pixels are generated through a simple contact between modular electrochemiluminescent (ECL) fibers. Each fiber is composed of a single metallic wire coated with a gel-type ECL electrolyte that is formed by using a simple dip-coating method in ambient air. The sticky nature of the gel electrolyte enables the construction of light-emitting pixels through the simple physical contact of two or more fiber modules without the need for external pressure or heating. The diversity of this technology offers in terms of fibrous module arrangements and assembly can provide various options for designing the geometries of light-emitting pixels. We have implemented this technique to demonstrate not only a 1 × 1 pixel but also 3 × 3 pixels with an irregular shape. These results demonstrate that the unique strategy for display devices developed in this work provides a feasible approach for various electronic and optical textile applications.

Development of chipscale InGaN RGB displays using strain-relaxed nanosphere-defined nanopillars

Chip-scale red, green and blue (RGB) light emission on an InGaN/GaN multi-quantum well wafer adopting a top-down fabrication approach is demonstrated in this study, facilitated by shadow-masked nanosphere lithography for precise site-controlled nano-patterning. Exploiting the strain relaxation mechanism by fabricating arrays of nanosphere-defined nanopillars of two different dimensions utilizing a sequential shadow-masked nanosphere coating approach into the blue and green light-emitting pixel regions on a red-light emitting InGaN/GaN wafer, RGB light emission from a monolithic chip is demonstrated. The micro-sized RGB light-emitting pixels emit at 645 nm–680 nm, 510 nm–521 nm and 475 nm–498 nm respectively, achieving a maximum color gamut of 60% NTSC and 72% sRGB. Dimensional fluctuations of the nanopillars of 73% and 71% for the green and blue light-emitting pixels, respectively, are estimated from scanning electron microscope images of the fabricated device, corresponding to fluctuations in spectral blue-shifts of 5.4 nm and 21.2 nm as estimated by strain-coupled k · p Schrödinger calculations, consistent with observations from micro-photoluminescence (μ-PL) mapping which shows deviations of emission wavelengths for the RGB light-emitting pixels to be 8.9 nm, 14.9 nm and 23.7 nm, respectively. The RGB pixels are also configured in a matrix-addressable configuration to form an RGB microdisplay, demonstrating the feasibility of the approach towards chip-scale color displays.

Manipulating Color Emission in 2D Hybrid Perovskites by Fine Tuning Halide Segregation: A Transparent Green Emitter.

Halide perovskite materials offer an ideal playground for easily tuning their color and, accordingly, the spectral range of their emitted light. In contrast to common procedures, this work demonstrates that halide substitution in Ruddlesden-Popper perovskites not only progressively modulates the bandgap, but it can also be a powerful tool to control the nanoscale phase segregation-by adjusting the halide ratio and therefore the spatial distribution of recombination centers. As a result, thin films of chloride-rich perovskite are engineered-which appear transparent to the human eye-with controlled tunable emission in the green. This is due to a rational halide substitution with iodide or bromide leading to a spatial distribution of phases where the minor component is responsible for the tunable emission, as identified by combined hyperspectral photoluminescence imaging and elemental mapping. This work paves the way for the next generation of highly tunable transparent emissive materials, which can be used as light-emitting pixels in advanced and low-cost optoelectronics.

Fabric displays in high resolution

Woven displays with a high number of light-emitting pixels can be created by interlacing two electrically conducting fibres and forming electroluminescent units at the crossover points.

Self-Integratable, Healable, and Stretchable Electroluminescent Device Fabricated via Dynamic Urea Bonds Equipped in Polyurethane.

Reversible bonding between polymer chains has been used primarily to induce self-healing of damaged polymers. Inspired by the dynamic nature of such bonding, we have developed a polyurethane equipped with dynamic urea bonds (PEDUB) that has high strength sufficient to make it be freestanding and have a healing capability and self-bonding property. This allowed subsequent heterogeneous multicomponent device integration of electrodes/substrate and light-emitting pixels into a light-emitting device. We first used the PEDUB to individually fabricate a highly stretchable electrode containing Ag nanowires and stretchable composites with ZnS-based particles. They were successfully assembled into a stretchable, waterproof electroluminescent (EL) device even under mild conditions (60 °C for 10 min) owing to the reversible exchange of urea bonds and low glass transition temperature of PEDUB. The assembled device with an AC-driven EL architecture retained excellent EL characteristics even after stretching, submersion in water, and cutting owing to the robust solid-state bonding interfaces induced by the dynamic urea bonds. Consequently, various shapes of the illuminating elastomer and an illuminated picture were realized for the first time using the mosaic-like assembly method. This first demonstration of multicomponent assembly paves the way for future stretchable multifunctional devices.

Oxygen-Induced In Situ Manipulation of the Interlayer Coupling and Exciton Recombination in Bi2Se3/MoS2 2D Heterostructures.

Two-dimensional (2D) heterostructures are more than a sum of the parent 2D materials, but are also a product of the interlayer coupling, which can induce new properties. In this paper, we present a method to tune the interlayer coupling in Bi2Se3/MoS2 2D heterostructures by regulating the oxygen presence in the atmosphere, while applying laser or thermal energy. Our data suggest that the interlayer coupling is tuned through the diffusive intercalation and deintercalation of oxygen molecules. When one layer of Bi2Se3 is grown on monolayer MoS2, an influential interlayer coupling is formed, which quenches the signature photoluminescence (PL) peaks. However, thermally treating in the presence of oxygen disrupts the interlayer coupling, facilitating the emergence of the MoS2 PL peak. Our density functional theory calculations predict that intercalated oxygen increases the interlayer separation ∼17%, disrupting the interlayer coupling and inducing the layers to behave more electronically independent. The interlayer coupling can then be restored by thermally treating in N2 or Ar, where the peaks will requench. Hence, this is an interesting oxygen-induced switching between "non-radiative" and "radiative" exciton recombination. This switching can also be accomplished locally, controllably, and reversibly using a low-power focused laser, while changing the environment from pure N2 to air. This allows for the interlayer coupling to be precisely manipulated with submicron spatial resolution, facilitating site-programmable 2D light-emitting pixels whose emission intensity could be precisely varied by a factor exceeding 200×. Our results show that these atomically thin 2D heterostructures may be excellent candidates for oxygen sensing.

A Building Brick Principle to Create Transparent Composite Films with Multicolor Emission and Self‐Healing Function

A cellulose paper is used impregnated with light-emitting CdTe nanocrystals and carbon dots, and filled with a polyurethane to fabricate uniform transparent composite films with bright photoluminescence of red (R), green (G), and blue (B) (RGB) colors. A building brick-like assembly method is introduced to realize RGB multicolor emission patterns from this composite material. By sectioning out individual pixels from monochrome-emissive composite sheets, the advantage of the self-healing properties of polyurethane is taken to arrange and weld them into a RGB patterned fabric by brief exposure to ethanol. This provides an approach to form single layer RGB light-emitting pixels, such as potentially required in the display applications, without the use of any lithographic or etching processing. The method can utilize a wide range of different solution-based kinds of light-emitting materials.

Multi-color microfluidic electrochemiluminescence cells

We demonstrated multi-color microfluidic electrochemiluminescence (ECL) cells. 5,6,11,12-Tetraphenylnaphthacene (rubrene), 9,10-diphenylanthracene (DPA), tetraphenyldibenzoperiflanthene (DBP)-doped rubrene, and 1,2,3,5-tetrakis(carbazol-9-yl)-4,6-dicyanobenzene (4CzIPN) dissolved in a mixed organic solvent of 1,2-dichlorobenzene and acetonitrile in the ratio of 2:1 (v/v) were used as yellow, blue, red, and green ECL solutions, respectively. Light emissions were confirmed using simple-structured ECL cells consisting of two indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass substrates with an SU-8 spacer of thickness varying from 0.9 to 6μm. The SU-8-based microfluidic ECL cells were fabricated using photolithography and heterogeneous bonding techniques through the use of epoxy- and amine-terminated self-assembled monolayers. The emitting layers were formed on-demand by injecting the chosen ECL solutions into the microchannels sandwiched between ITO anode and cathode pairs. Multi-color ECL was successfully obtained at the light-emitting pixels. The microfluidic ECL cells with DBP-doped rubrene solution showed a maximum luminance of 11.6cd/m2 and the current efficiency of ca. 0.32cd/A at 8V. We expect that the proposed microfluidic device will be a highly promising technology for liquid-based light-emitting applications.

Laser-assisted forward transfer of multi-spectral nanocrystal quantum dot emitters

We report in this paper the development of a novel laser-transfer scheme to integratelaterally arrays of light-emitting pixels made of semiconductor nanocrystal quantum dots(NQDs). The nanocrystal composition and size can be tailored such that the luminescenceemission of the quantum dots in each device pixel constitutes a distinctive spectral channelof narrow bandwidth. An ultrathin film of photosensitive triazene polymer (TP) has beenemployed as the sacrificial layer whose decomposition upon UV excitation delivers thebilayer structure of nanocrystal and metal films to the substrates. The ejected plume ofthe decomposed photosensitive polymer produces a thrust force to ensure theconformal contacts between the NQD layer and the bottom hole transport layer. A6 × 6 red and yellow matrixwith pixel sizes of 800 µm is demonstrated. This technique opens up the possibility of developing small, on-chip lightsources featured with multiple wavelength channels over a desired spectral range as well asthe flexible substratum.

High-resolution organic polymer light-emitting pixels fabricated by imprinting technique

We have developed an approach to fabricate pixelated organic polymer light-emitting devices (OPLED) using an imprinting technique. The pixel array pattern was first defined in an insulating polymer layer on indium tin oxide glass by direct imprinting, followed by the spin-coating of OPLED polymers and cathode metal deposition. We demonstrated successful fabrication and operation of OPLED pixels of sizes from 50 μm down to 2 μm. Optoelectronic characterization is performed on these devices, and measured results show comparable device performance with OPLED pixels patterned by other methods. This fabrication scheme holds many merits such as easy to process, low-cost, high yield, expandable to flexible substrate, capable of repeated imprinting for large area arrays, and the potential to pattern submicron and nanoscale organic polymer light emitters.

Room Temperature Laser Action in Laterally Overgrown GaN Pyramids on (111) Silicon

Single and multi-mode room temperature laser action was observed in GaN pyramids under strong optical pumping. The 5- and 15-micron-wide hexagonal-based pyramids were laterally overgrown on a patterned GaN/AlN seeding layer grown on a (111) silicon substrate by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. The pyramids were individually pumped, imaged, and spectrally analyzed through a high magnification optical system using a high density pulsed excitation source. We suggest that the cavity formed in a pyramid is of a ring type, formed by total internal reflections of light off the pyramids’ surfaces. The mode spacing of the laser emission was found to be correlated to the size of pyramids. The effects of pyramid geometry and pulse excitation on the nature of laser oscillations inside of the pyramids is discussed. Practical applications of the results for the development of light-emitting pixels and laser arrays are suggested.

Dual-color polymer light-emitting pixels processed by hybrid inkjet printing

A hybrid inkjet printing (HIJP) technology, which combines a pin-hole free polymer buffer layer and an inkjet printed polymer layer, allows the patterning of high quality polymer light-emitting devices. In this letter, we present a successful demonstration of controllable patterning of dual-color polymer light-emitting pixels using this HIJP technique. In this demonstration, the polymer buffer layer is a wide band gap, blue emitting semiconducting polymer prepared by the spin-casting technique. The inkjet printed layer is a red-orange semiconducting polymer which was printed onto the buffer layer. When a proper solvent was selected, the printed polymer diffused into the buffer layer and efficient energy transfer took place generating a red-orange photoluminescence and electroluminescence from the inkjet printed sites. Based on this principle, blue and orange-red dual-color polymer light-emitting pixels were fabricated on the same substrate. The use of this concept represents an entirely new technology for fabricating polymer multicolor displays with high-resolution, lateral patterning capability.