Breakthrough in red-emitting InGaN Pyramidal MicroLEDs

Polar Light Technologies has attained this milestone after more than 15 years research work and development. These novel microLEDs will open the gate towards future spatial computing and next-generation panel displays.

The concept with the pyramidal design employed by Polar Light Technologies, will allow the ability with manufacturable microLEDs, while still maintaining their outstanding performance. Accordingly, the pyramidal microLEDs are ideal candidates for monolithic RGB displays.

Red LED emission without compromises

Due to the nitride material properties, there is an increasing challenge to realise efficient microLEDs as one goes towards longer wavelengths. While blue and green microLEDs have been on the market for years, reaching the red colour is facing fundamental challenges due to the internal lattice-mismatch. Red colour microLEDs have been demonstrated and reported, but they come with different compromises, such as manufacturability or the need to combine 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 realising the red-emitting microLEDs based on our innovative pyramidal structure”, says Lisa Rullik, CTO of Polar Light Technologies.

High performance pyramidal LED structures

Polar Light Technologies’ microLED technology is based on a bottom-up approach to form the LEDs of pyramidal design.

This technology comes with unique benefits:

• A major challenge of the InGaN/GaN material system is the internal strain due to the lattice-mismatch, which can be better handled in PLTs pyramidal structures enabling manufacturing blue, green, and red microLEDs with the same material system, i.e. to build monolithic RGB.
• The pyramidal concept offers unique possibilities for hybridisation between the frontplane and the backplane of the microLED.
• A major advantage of PLTs bottom-up concept is that the devastating etching is not needed, which means that the microLED performance can be maintained also as the dimensions of the LED structures are decreasing, since no etching damages will occur.
• With PLTs pyramidal concept, it will be easier to integrate with CMOS and TFT
• A narrow output light cone: a Lambertian, or even sub-Lambertian, light lobe from the pyramidal emitter is important for many opto-applications e.g. micro-projectors.

These benefits are crucial for the microLED’ performance to solve key challenges for many applications and bring the Polar Light Technologies technology to the market.

Next generation nanoLEDs

Polar Light Technologies’ same-compound-based microLEDs offer high performance combined with excellent manufacturability. Their small dimensions and narrow emission cone further enhance the performance. The possibility to decrease the LED dimensions to the sub-mm regime will enable also the next LED generation – nanoLEDs:

“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.”