UC Santa Barbara’s Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center (SSLEEC) is at the forefront of the fields of lighting and solid-state devices. Read on to learn more about the newly available technology that has emerged from the Center recently.
The benefits of Gallium Nitride (GaN) as a semiconductor material are significant and far-reaching. GaN’s power efficiency and unique optical properties position it as the backbone material for the next generation of innovation across a wide swath of devices. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara continue to pioneer advancements in GaN applications and bring this technology to the world just as they did with the emergence of solid state lighting.
This GaN VCSEL achieves high efficiency, high peak power, and long device lifetimes by eliminating degradation to the active region, improving emission intensity, and significantly reducing absorption loss within the cavity.
This technology minimizes or entirely prevents the formation of misfit dislocations at the interface of the heterostructure of III-V compound-based devices — even those grown under large lattice mismatch conditions. The improved performance enables applications in optical integrated circuits (ICs), displays, automobiles, power grids, and more.
This technology produces a wafer-scale, low defect density, strain relaxed template (SRT) for III-nitride-based devices. By utilizing a thin, highly defective III-nitride decomposition layer beneath a strain relaxed layer, followed by patterned etching and regrowth via lateral overgrowth, this approach dramatically reduces threading dislocation density and strain across large wafer areas.
This technology improves the layer structure and growth conditions for green InGaN emitters, resulting in higher power output and higher efficiency while growing the devices on or above a strain-relaxed template (SRT).
Solid-state emitters in the ultraviolet and far-UV ranges are in their early stages and are typically restricted by low efficiency and short device lifetimes. Solutions to these problems continue to emerge out of SSLEEC, respresenting unprecedented opportunities for highly efficient, long-lasting UV light emitters that will transform a host of commercial applications.
This design for ultraviolet (UV) or far-UV LEDs incorporates a novel doped multilayer structure that demonstrates an approximate 300% improvement in output power compared to conventional alternatives.
This technology addresses the efficiency barrier in VCSELs by leveraging epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) and a novel approach to foreign substrate removal. This technology produces crack-free, long lifetime devices with high crystal quality and significantly reduced defect densities and stacking faults compared to devices made directly on a native substrate.
This technology produces highly efficient PhC LEDs of micro and macro size with epitaxially integrated light control features. This technology does not etch directly on the active layer, which eliminates possible damage to the quantum wells. Instead, light-controlling structures are epitaxially integrated directly onto the device layer at the initial stage of growth.
This technology describes a technique for removing III-nitride devices from their substrates with quick processing times and without significant damage to the devices. This technique is applicable to multiple semiconductor device types.
The substrate market for the III-N material system has been expanding for decades, and researchers at UCSB are pioneering new techniques in electrochemical etching, allowing thin-film nitride layers to be lifted with minimal damage.
This technology combines electrochemical etching with hydride vapor phase epitaxy growth, enabling high-quality production and recycling of III-nitride substrates with minimized wafer bowing and off-angle distribution.
This technology formulates a method to lift off and remove thin-film nitride layers from the growth substrate. This method deposits a sacrificial layer below or under the epitaxial nitride layers during the material growth; exposes the sacrificial layers; performs an electrochemical etch to fully etch away the sacrificial layer, allowing the epitaxial nitride layers to become separated from the growth substrate; and finally transfers the thin film nitride layers.