Optical design of InGaN/GaN nanoLED arrays on a chip: toward: highly resolved illumination

Abstract

The physical laws of diffraction limit the spatial resolution of optical systems. In contrary to most superresolution microscopy approaches used today, in our novel idea we are aiming to overcome this limit by developing a spatially resolved illumination source based on semiconductor nanoscale Light Emitting Diode (nanoLED) arrays with individual pixel control. We present and discuss the results of optical simulations performed for such nanoLED emitter arrays and analyze the theoretical limits of this approach. As possible designs we study arrays of GaN nanofins and nanorods (obtained by etching nanofin arrays), with InGaN/GaN multi quantum wells embedded as active regions. We find that a suitable choice of the array dimensions leads to a reasonably directed light output and concentration of the optical power in the near field around an activated pixel. As a consequence, the spatial resolution for this type of microscopy should only be limited by the pixel pitch, and no longer by the optical diffraction. Realization of optimized nanoLED arrays has a potential to open new field of chip based superresolution microscopy, making super-high spatial resolution ubiquitously available.

Enhancement of Luminous Intensity Emission from Incoherent LED Light Sources within the Detection Angle of 10° Using Metalenses

“…In this work, the points sources are placed at the center of the 3 × 3 lattice ( Figure S2b ). The effect of the relative locations of the sources is negligible in a 3 μm × 3 μm LED source, as the 3 × 3 array of dipole sources provides a similar light emission to a single point source of the same size [ 89 ].…”

A Novel Approach for a Chip-Sized Scanning Optical Microscope

“…The extracted resolution from one of the 1.6 µm square’s edges was 1.56 µm ( Figure 10 b), four times the expected resolution (400 nm), since the sample was placed directly over the nanoLEDs. However, further analysis of the nanoLED array configuration (by finite difference time domain simulations [ 26 ]) showed that the metal structure and the depth of the light emitter region affected the spot shape and size at the chip surface, degrading the resolving power of the setup.…”

Photon extraction enhancement of praseodymium ions in gallium nitride nanopillars

“…Efficient and ecological small photon emitters, e.g. nano/micro-scale light emitting diode (LED) [1][2][3][4][5][6] and monolithic RGB emitters [7][8][9] , are required for next generation lighting and display applications. Reliable single photon sources (SPS or single photon emitter: SPE) 10 , which provide on-demand single photons are indispensable in the field of rapidly growing quantum technologies such as quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum communications (quantum internet) [11][12][13][14] .…”