KEYWORDS: Deep ultraviolet, Light emitting diodes, Wireless communications, Signal to noise ratio, Sun, Signal attenuation, Lighting standards, Light sources and illumination, Interference (communication), Epitaxy
Since the intensity of deep ultraviolet (DUV) light with the wavelength below 300 nm is nearly zero in the sun spectrum, optical wireless communications (OWC) based on DUV light can have a unique “zero-background” characteristics. We recently demonstrated LED-based DUV OWC at 280-nm band over a 1.5-m direct line-of-site channel realizing the effective data rate of as fast as >2 Gbps under standard room lighting and >1 Gbps under direct sun with outdoor experiments. These experiments were performed off-the-shell DUV AlGaN light-emitting diodes, which was grown by metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy using an AlN/sapphire template with dense macrosteps.
High-speed optical wireless communication (OWC) systems based on light-emitting diode (LED), such as Li-Fi, are promising solutions for the looming spectrum crisis in 6G wireless communications. OWCs typically extend the RF spectrum by harnessing the visible light and infrared spectra, but the recent advancements in deep-ultraviolet (DUV) LED device technology allow us to further extend the OWC spectrum down to the DUV range, namely the solar-blind band. This talk reviews the recent progress of the high-speed OWCs based on DUV-LEDs including Gbps-class transmission demonstrations in direct sunlight and analyses on the microscopic structural and optical characteristics of high-speed AlGaN-based LEDs.
AlGaN-based LEDs are expected to be useful for sterilization, deodorization, photochemical applications such as UV curing and UV printing, medical applications such as phototherapy, and sensing. Today, it has become clear that efficient AlGaN-based LED dies are producible between 355 and 250 nm with an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 3% on flat sapphire. These dies were realized on flat sapphire without using a special technique, i.e., reduction in threading dislocation density or light extraction enhancement techniques such as the use of a photonic crystal or a patterned sapphire substrate. Despite the limited light extraction efficiency of about 8% owing to light absorption at a thick p-GaN contact layer, high EQEs of approximately 6% has been reproducible between 300 and 280 nm without using special techniques. Moreover, an EQE of 3.9% has been shown at 271 nm, despite the smaller current injection efficiency (CIE). The high EQEs are thought to correspond to the high internal quantum efficiency (IQE), indicating a small room for improving IQE. Accordingly, resin encapsulation on a simple submount is strongly desired. Recently, we have succeeded in demonstrating fluorine resin encapsulation on a ceramic sheet (chip-on-board, COB) that is massproducible. Furthermore, the molecular structure of a resin with a durability of more than 10,000 h is explained in this paper from the photochemical viewpoint. Thus, the key technologies of AlGaN-based DUV-LEDs having an EQE of 10% within a reasonable production cost have been established. The achieved efficiency makes AlGaN-based DUVLEDs comparable to high-pressure mercury lamps.
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