Polar Light Tech makes microLED breakthrough
Red pyramidal microLED based on the same material as green and blue
Sweden-based Polar Light Technologies has achieved red light of 625 nm based on the company’s non-etching bottom-up concept. This means the company has built red, green, and blue pyramidal microLEDs using the same material compound.
The pyramidal design has the ability to be manufacturable while maintaining excellent microLED performance, laying the foundation for monolithic RGB displays, according to Polar.
Blue and green MicroLEDs have been in the market for years, but reaching a red colour has been difficult due to fundamental challenges in the material properties. There are several workarounds or alternatives for reaching a red colour, but they all come with some compromises, such as efficiency, manufacturability, or the need to integrate with other material systems.
“Pursuing Polar Lights’ innovative pyramidal LED concept has been about overcoming those challenges without compromises. Today, thanks to a great tech team, we have succeeded in realizing the red-emitting microLEDs based on our innovative pyramidal structure”, says Lisa Rullik, CTO of Polar Light Technologies.
Pyramidal structures
Polar Light Technologies’ microLED is composed of pyramid shapes that are built with a novel bottom-up approach, a technology that has a number of benefits, according to the company.
One is that the inevitable strain in the lattice-mismatched InGaN/GaN structures is reduced, which is important to be able to manufacture blue, green, and red microLEDs with the same material system, that is, to build monolithic RGB.
The approach also makes it possible to integrate the frontplane with a backplane. And no etching is needed, which means performance is maintained also for smaller dimensions since no etching damages occur.
Other benefits that it enables nanoLEDs, it is easier to manufacture and integrate with CMOS and TFT, and it there is a narrow emission cone (which is important for microprojectors).
“Our technology addresses microLED challenges in a way that has never been done before,” says Oskar Fajerson, CEO of Polar Light Technologies. “Now we’re moving towards commercialisation of this groundbreaking technology, focusing on putting products on the market.”
