GaN Microdisk Light-emitting Diode Display Fabricated on Graphene

Abstract

Microdisplay with high resolution, brightness, and efficiency with long-term stability and reliability are highly required for advanced display technologies. Inorganic semiconductors LEDs best suits this purpose because they can emit very high density of light from a small area and they have very high efficiency and long-term stability. To use inorganic LEDs for display applications, various lift-off and transfer techniques of inorganic thin films grown on single crystal substrates, such as sapphire or Si, were developed. However, achieving display devices using inorganic semiconductor thin films is still very challenging because of the limited size and high manufacturing cost of the single crystal substrates, as well as the complicated processes required for lift-off and assembly. To resolve this problem, growths of inorganic semiconductor nanostructures and thin films on graphene substrates have recently been proposed, since graphene has great scalability and extremely thin layered hexagonal lattice structure as an excellent substrate for GaN growth. Moreover, the inorganic semiconductors prepared on large-area graphene can be transferred easily to or grown on elastic substrates to meet the flexibility demand. Here, we suggest a method of fabricating ultrathin, high-resolution inorganic microdisplay based on individually addressable GaN microdisk LED arrays grown on graphene dots.

Here, we report on the fabrication and EL characteristics of ultrathin and individually addressable GaN microdisk LED arrays grown on graphene dots for microdisplay applications. GaN microdisks were prepared by epitaxial lateral overgrowth on patterned graphene microdots on SiO2/Si substrates using MOVPE. After preparing the GaN microdisk arrays, p-GaN and InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well, and n-GaN layers were heteroepitaxially grown on the surface of the GaN microdisks. Ultrathin layers composed of GaN microdisk LED arrays on graphene dot were prepared by coating a polyimide layer and lifting-off the entire layers from the substrate. Then, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs)/Ni/Au and SWCNTs/Ti/Au multiple electrode lines were formed on the top and bottom surface of GaN microdisk arrays in an aligned manner and crossing each other. The electrical and optical characteristics of the individually addressable GaN microdisk array on graphene dots were investigated by measuring their I–V curves and EL characteristics at various bending conditions. We also confirmed that the ultrathin micro-LED display worked reliably under flexible conditions and continuous operation mode.