Novel hybrid light emitting diodes with multiple assemblies of nanocrystals to generate and tune white light

Abstract

Today approximately one third of the world population (about two billion people) in under-developed countries has no access to electricity and relies on unhealthy, costly and low-quality fuel-based lighting for home illumination. In the rest of the world, lighting consumes a large portion (20%) of the total electricity production, which significantly contributes to global warming problem. Also given limited resources, such large energy consumption needs to be reduced for sustainable economic growth. Solid state lighting provides remedy to these problems for the entire globe. Therefore, the advancement of white light emitting diodes (WLEDs) becomes a key point for development of human civilization. To this end, the strong demand for the development of high quality WLEDs around the globe motivates our research work on the investigation of white light generation with high color rendering index. In this thesis, we develop and demonstrate nanocrystal hybridized light emitting diodes with high color rendering index. By the hybridization of multiple layer-by-layer assemblies of CdSe/ZnS core-shell nanocrystals on blue and near ultraviolet (n-UV) InGaN/GaN light emitting diodes, we show white light generation with highly tunable optical properties such as tristimulus color coordinates, correlated color temperature, and color rendering index. Additionally, by using dual hybridization of nanocrystals in combination with conjugated polymers, we obtain white light sources with high color rendering indices exceeding the requirements of the future solid state lighting applications. In this thesis, we present design, growth, fabrication, experimental characterization and theoretical analysis of these hybrid white LEDs.