LED Material Shines Under Strain

Smartphones, laptops, and lighting applications rely on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to shine bright. But the brighter these LED technologies shine, the more inefficient they become, releasing more energy as heat instead of light.

Now, as reported in the journal Science, a team led by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley has demonstrated an approach for achieving near 100% light-emission efficiency at all brightness levels. Their approach focuses on stretching or compressing a thin semiconductor film in a way that favorably changes its electronic structure.

The team identified just how the semiconductor’s electronic structure dictated interaction among the energetic particles within the material. Those particles sometimes collide and annihilate each other, losing energy as heat instead of emitting light in the process. Changing the material’s electronic structure reduced the likelihood for annihilation and led to a near-perfect conversion of energy to light, even at high brightness.

Read more at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Image Credit: Ali Javey/Berkeley Lab

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