Technology Licensing View

This invention represents the design of a micro-scale, up-converting, solid state lighting device intended for low voltage operation at red, green, and blue operation for use in portable visual indicator systems and displays.

Visual indicator displays have become ubiquitous in today’s society, from personal cell phones to military grade head mounted displays. As such, research into mirco-scale solid state light sources has been driven toward the successful development of LED light sources of all colors. Unfortunately, high energy sources (blues and purples) from nitride semiconductors are still very expensive and organic LEDs (OLEDs) are simply not robust enough over time for many applications. It, therefore, becomes necessary to develop a new way to generate visible light of all colors to feed the blossoming need for rich, vivid displays that will have long life, contain costs, lend to simple fabrication, and be low voltage for portable battery operation.

Technical Details

It is known that by illuminating rare-earth doped materials, such as ytterbium, erbium, and thulium, with invisible infrared (IR) light, they re-radiate at specific visible wavelengths (or colors). This process, known as frequency up-conversion, has been applied herein to the above problem by researchers at UCF. By taking a single, low voltage IR-LED, and adding up-convertinig materials, one may easily turn a cheap, well established device intended for battery operation into a red, green, or, blue solid state light source.

Benefits

• Lower cost
• Longer life than OLED devices
• Easy fabrication
• Low power consumption

Applications

• Personal electronic devices with user interfaces with vibrant color displays

See related technologies:

“More Color and Brightness for Compact Displays”  Technology Numbers: 31001, 31880, 31908

“Resonant Cavity Enhances Efficiency of IR to Visible Light Conversion”  Technology Number: 31036

"Display Design Suitable for Projection Displays with an Increased Color Gamut" Technology Number: 31299