SUMMARY
In this invention, a new material that is capable of producing light in the ultraviolet band of the electromagnetic spectrum has been developed. The material developed consists of a small amount of dilute As (Arsenic) in AlNAs (Aluminum-Nitride-Arsenic) material and is called dilute-As AlNAs alloy.
This material has many unique properties that will enable optoelectronic systems to demonstrate better performance than provided by current materials used for emitters. The light emitter based on this material is shown to have superior performance than similar laser-based devices. The new material’s characteristics such improved efficiency, spectral properties, compactness and integration capability makes it a good candidate to replace existing technology used in other deep UV optoelectronics applications.
Competitive Advantage
This material offers a number of competitive advantages over currently used optoelectronic light emitters. The most important one is better light emission performance over currently used emitters made of other materials. The second advantage is the ability to fabricate this material using low amounts of the required impurity. This makes manufacturing and production much simpler than that of current materials, which require larger doses of impurity and present difficulties during epitaxy. Thirdly, its ability to demonstrate dominant TE (Transverse Electric) polarized emission could make it usable in other fields such as medical and environmental applications.
Lehigh Tech ID # 051915-01
Market Need/Opportunity
The main application in the field of optoelectronics for this invention is light emitting diodes (LED) and lasers. UV-LEDs are promising candidates for various applications: replacing UV lamps; fluorescence light sources for lighting and displays; high-resolution light sources for microscopes and exposure machines; light sources for chemical excitation as used for resin curing, medicine, and biotechnology; excitation light sources for spectroscopy as used for banknote identification, DNA chips, and environmental monitoring; sanitary light sources for disinfection and sterilization. The superior characteristics of this device combined with its ease of fabrication also make it highly suitable for integration into a variety of other optoelectronics devices and systems.
Status
Lehigh University is looking for a partner for further development and commercialization of this technology through a license. The inventor is available to collaborate with interested companies.