Another SFI Future Frontiers Award!

11 May 2022

Next Generation Visible and UV Light Emitting Devices

Congratulations to UCC and Tyndall Academic staff Peter Parbrook (Professor in the School of Engineering) and Stefan Schulz (Lecturer in the Department of Physics) who have recently received €1 million to undertake research on novel material structures for visible and ultra-violet light emitting devices from the Science Foundation Ireland Frontiers for the Future Award Programme.

Visible light emitting diodes (LEDs) have huge potential for micro-displays (such as for virtual reality headsets) if scaled small enough (into so-called micro-LEDs), but conventional red LEDs are difficult to shrink.

Ultra-violet (UV) LEDs can be used in sterilisation (to destroy bacteria like MRSA and viruses such as coronavirus in hospital environments).  However, they need to be more efficient.

This work aims to overcome these challenges by adding boron to the active region of state of the art of visible and UV LEDs which will allow extension of the wavelength region where high performance can be obtained by engineering the fundamental properties of the semiconductor material to suit the application. Here we combine fundamental theoretical analysis with experimental demonstration and testing of the concepts to enable beyond state-of-the-art device performance. 

Stefan Schulz stated that “developing new device structure requires a detailed theoretical understanding of the physics involved in such novel materials. This project presents an exciting opportunity where theory and experiment can go hand in hand to design future devices with enhanced performance.”

The Project will officially start in July 2022.