Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 21 August 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5943, pp. 977 - 981
DOI: 10.1126/science.1175690
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Printed Assemblies of Inorganic Light-Emitting Diodes for Deformable and Semitransparent Displays

Sang-Il Park,1,* Yujie Xiong,1,*,{dagger} Rak-Hwan Kim,1,* Paulius Elvikis,2 Matthew Meitl,3 Dae-Hyeong Kim,1 Jian Wu,4 Jongseung Yoon,1 Chang-Jae Yu,1 Zhuangjian Liu,5 Yonggang Huang,4,6 Keh-chih Hwang,7 Placid Ferreira,2 Xiuling Li,8 Kent Choquette,8 John A. Rogers1,2,{ddagger}

We have developed methods for creating microscale inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and for assembling and interconnecting them into unusual display and lighting systems. The LEDs use specialized epitaxial semiconductor layers that allow delineation and release of large collections of ultrathin devices. Diverse shapes are possible, with dimensions from micrometers to millimeters, in either flat or "wavy" configurations. Printing-based assembly methods can deposit these devices on substrates of glass, plastic, or rubber, in arbitrary spatial layouts and over areas that can be much larger than those of the growth wafer. The thin geometries of these LEDs enable them to be interconnected by conventional planar processing techniques. Displays, lighting elements, and related systems formed in this manner can offer interesting mechanical and optical properties.

1 Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Beckman Institute, and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
2 Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
3 Semprius, Durham, NC 27713, USA.
4 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
5 Institute of High Performance Computing, 1 Fusionopolis Way, 16-16 Connexis, Singapore 138632.
6 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
7 Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
8 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} Present address: School of Engineering and Applied Science, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.

{ddagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jrogers{at}uiuc.edu

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)