1.3  GHz E-O bandwidth GaN-based micro-LED for multi-gigabit visible light communication

Abstract

The data rate of a visible light communication (VLC) system is basically determined by the electrical-to-optical (E-O) bandwidth of its light-emitting diode (LED) source. In order to break through the intrinsic limitation of the carrier recombination rate on E-O bandwidth in conventional c-plane LEDs based on InGaN quantum wells, a blue micro-LED with an active region of nano-structured InGaN wetting layer is designed, fabricated, and packaged to realize a high-speed VLC system. The E-O bandwidth of the micro-LED can reach up to 1.3 GHz. Based on this high-speed micro-LED, we demonstrated a data rate of 2 Gbps with a bit error rate (BER) of 1.2 × 10 − 3 with simple on-off keying signal for a 3-m real-time VLC. In addition, a 4-Gbps VLC system using quadrature phase shift keying-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing with a BER of 3.2 × 10 − 3 is also achieved for the same scenario. Among all the point-to-point VLC systems based on a single-pixel LED, this work has the highest distance-bandwidth product of 3 GHz·m and the highest distance-rate product of 12 Gbps·m.

Encapsulation-Enabled Perovskite–PMMA Films Combining a Micro-LED for High-Speed White-Light Communication

“…The highbandwidth GaN-based blue μLED with 75 μm diameter was designed and fabricated by a modified package based on our previous work. 35 A metal−organic chemical vapor-phase deposition system (2000HT, Aixtron) was used for the epitaxy of an LED sample on a 2 in. (0001) sapphire substrate with a thickness of 430 μm.…”

Emerging light-emitting diodes for next-generation data communications

“…However, fast LEDs based on emerging materials, especially with organic functional layers, have much lower carrier mobilities (for example, ~10 −6 -10 −2 cm 2 V −1 s −1 ) than those of III-V semiconductors (for example, ~10 2 -10 3 cm 2 V −1 s −1 ). Therefore, other than those fast µLEDs with fairly small RC time constants (neglected in the most of cases) 7,8,138 , such an effect becomes significant in LEDs focused on in this Review. In addition, the charge transit time τ tr , which is the time over which the injected carriers drift from the terminals to the recombination region, may not be neglected in the optimization of high-speed LEDs with these materials 38 .…”

“…A non-polar m-plane InGaN/GaN µLED with a high modulation bandwidth of 1.5 GHz was demonstrated in 2018 7 , and a 1.3 GHz electrical-to-optical bandwidth quantum dot (QD) µLED was recently reported with a data rate of 4 Gbps (ref. 8 ). Nevertheless, conventional approaches are challenged by the high requirements for low size, weight, power and cost of next-generation data communication systems 5,9,10 .Organic semiconductors, colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) and metal halide perovskites offer tailorable optoelectronic properties, mechanical flexibility and low-cost processing 10 .…”

Enhancement of the Modulation Response of Quantum-Dot-Based Down-Converted Light through Surface Plasmon Coupling

“…In particular, a visible communication system can be combined with a lighting facility of white light. Therefore, the maximization of the MB of a single- or mixed-color device is an important task in LED design and fabrication [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. In a mixed-color or white-light LED, photon down-conversion is involved in producing multiple colors in the same device [ 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”